Roundup

Thanksgiving was always about Climate and Adaptation: Let’s Make it Green Again

by Juan Cole

The pilgrims faced a harsher climate than had Leif Erikson when he came to North America during the European medieval warming period.

On Thanksgiving Day, Remember Fast Day

by Dean Grodzins

Americans have forgotten Fast Day, although it once was as important a holiday as Thanksgiving. In fact, it was paired with Thanksgiving and considered its necessary complement.

How the Chicken Built America

by Andrew Lawler

While the eagle landed on the country’s Great Seal and the turkey gets pride of place at our holiday dinners, neither bird can claim to have changed American culture more than their lowly avian cousin, the chicken.

It took a decade before film could look at the trauma of World War I straight on

by Ryan Copping

How we remember the war is largely shaped by how popular artists struggled and sought to approach it in the late 20s and early 30s.

The Myth of Thanksgiving

by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

“Thanksgiving” became a named holiday during the Civil War, but neither Pilgrims, nor Indians, nor food, nor the Mayflower—all essential to today’s celebration—were mentioned in Lincoln’s 1863 proclamation.

Sherrod Brown Should Challenge Hillary Clinton for President

by Michael Kazin

For progressive Democrats, Brown would be a nearly perfect nominee.

When Is a War Over?

by Elizabeth D. Samet

Knowing when — and how — to stop is a problem as old as war itself.

Russians Invade Afghanistan (Again!), Chinese Fight Iraq War (Again!)

by Tom Engelhardt

What If It Weren’t Us?

Are there lessons to be learned from Algeria’s past?

by Dalia Ghanem-Yazbeck

If left to rot, the areas currently under ISIL control will ultimately rebel against their occupiers.

Save the Humanities in Our Public Schools

by Helen Vendler

We're depriving students of their national heritage. Here's how to fix that.

Thomas Menino: The mayor who welcomed Sacco and Vanzetti

by Richard Kreitner

It took a special Bostonian to put a sculpture of anarchists in the Boston Public Library.

Cold War 2.0 not a likely win for the US

by Robert Freeman

Today, things are dramatically different. Other countries have caught up with and even surpassed the U.S. in economic power.

Malarkey on the Potomac

by Andrew J. Bacevich

Five Bedrock Washington Assumptions That Are Hot Air

Are great leaders a thing of the past? Maybe it’s just that our world got larger

by Andrew Coyne

Maybe it’s just that our world got larger.

Roundup Top 10!

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

Obama’s JFK Problem

by Fredrik Logevall and Gordon M. Goldstein

How the battle between the president and his joint chiefs chairman over Iraq recalls the early days of Vietnam.

This is how kids are learning the history of the French Revolution now (video)

by Kabir Chibber

Let Them Play Assassin's Creed? With sympathetic noblemen and bloodthirsty common folk, the French Revolution-set Unity is re-igniting an historic debate over the period's heroes and villains.

3rd Possibility: Coming Civil War in West Bank/ Jerusalem?

by Juan Cole

Observers of the evolution of the relationship between Israel and the Palestinians have long argued that there are only two likely outcomes of the alternating violence and diplomacy between the two sides that has gone on nearly 70 years now.

The New Republic at 100: A Century of Bickering

by Jennifer Schuessler

With the magazine celebrating its 100th anniversary, a former Yahoo News executive was hired for the top of the masthead, setting off speculation about a new direction.

This Republican Loved Taxes & Modern Art

by Scott Porch

A social progressive and a fiscal conservative, Nelson Rockefeller was closer to FDR than Reagan, says his biographer Richard Norton Smith.