Roundup

Private Mercenaries and the War on Terror in American Foreign Policy

by Jeremy Kuzmarov

A blueprint for American strategy in the War on Terror was the 1959-1975 secret war in Laos, where the CIA worked with hundreds of civilian contractors

The myth that police were targets of widespread violence in the 1970s lives again

by Tony Platt

Contrary to popular perceptions, there are very few documented cases of politically motivated assassinations of state officials in the United States.

The Elusive Chinese Dream

by Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom

The Communist Party should be more confident than ever. So why is it so anxious?

Lincoln at Gettysburg

by Diana Schaub

The most obvious problem in approaching Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address is that we know it so well.

Are liberal politicians responsible for the violence against the police?

by Jonathan Zimmerman

Let’s stop blaming groups for the behavior of individuals.

Is history what you think you remember?

by Paul Krugman

1980 and all that

Roundup Top 10!

This week's broad sampling of opinion pieces found on the Internet, as selected by the editors of HNN.

Governors may not have edge in 2016 presidential race

by Jonathan Zimmerman

In stretches of U.S. history, governors were top choices for president. But will a senator win again in 2016?

1904. The History of New Year's Eve In Times Square

New York in 1904 was a city on the verge of tremendous changes - and, not surprisingly, many of those changes had their genesis in the bustling energy and thronged streets of Times Square.

What ‘Selma’ Gets Wrong

by Mark K. Updegrove

LBJ and MLK were close partners in reform.

Everything’s Coming Together While Everything Falls Apart

by Rebecca Solnit

The Climate for 2015

Are We a Great Nation?

by Steve Hochstadt

Now we know a lot more about the role of torture in America.

The Secret History of Filing Cabinets

by Paul Krugman

Boxes or drawers were one possibility, but they still involved a lot of shuffling, and relevant letters could easily be overlooked. The answer? The vertical file, with a tab indicating the contents of each folder.

Selma Documents Black History That Still Lives Today

by Peniel E. Joseph

It’s been 50 years since voting-rights protesters on a bloody bridge in Alabama declared that black lives matter—and the unceasing struggle for justice goes on.

A Poor Imitation of Alan Turing

by Christian Caryl

To anyone trying to turn this story into a movie, the choice seems clear: either you embrace the richness of Turing as a character and trust the audience to follow you there, or you simply capitulate, by reducing him to a caricature of the tortured genius.

How a Massachusetts man invented the global ice market

by Leon Neyfakh

An entrepreneur’s 1806 scheme to sell chunks of frozen New England ponds still shapes how we live.

Fantastically Wrong: What Darwin Really Screwed Up About Evolution

by Matt Simon

"There was a bit of a problem with all of this natural selection stuff, though: Darwin didn’t know how it, uh, worked."

King biographer Taylor Branch says MLK really believed in non-violence

by Ron Rosenbaum

When a Nazi threw a punch at him and hit him hard, he pleaded with a crowd not to hurt him.

Jeb Bush can win it all

by Julian Zelizer

Ever since "Bridge-gate" threatened to derail the once "inevitable" nomination of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie as the Republican presidential candidate for 2016, Jeb Bush has been hinting that he might jump into the fray. Now he has.

The astounding record of United States interventions in Latin America

by John H. Coatsworth

In the slightly less than a hundred years from 1898 to 1994, the U.S. government has intervened successfully to change governments in Latin America a total of at least 41 times.