Historians/History

War and Intrigue Before the Feast: Author Jennet Conant on Julia Child and Company in the OSS

by Robin Lindley

Writing History in an Age of Inequality

by Jefferson Cowie

Channelling George Washington: How Kentucky Stayed in the Union

by Thomas Fleming

Preserving History at the U.S. National Library of Medicine

by Kristi Davenport, Peter Gabriele, Stephen Greenberg, Holly Herro, Christie Moffatt, Paul Theerman, and Jeffrey S. Reznick

Memorial Day prompts us to remember and honor those men and women who fought and died in the line of battle.  It is also an occasion to remember that history fades:  that the material which holds and conveys our knowledge, experiences, and memories—printed books and journals, hand-written documents, photographic images, films of various formats—are all subject to the laws of nature.

Thicker than Water: Dr. Holly Tucker on Blood, Medicine and the Scientific Revolution of the 1600s

by Robin Lindley

We are linked by blood, and blood is memory without language. Joyce Carol Oates

The Last Cavalry Charge in U.S. History

by Peter F. Stevens

“Mount up!”

How Hate Groups Influenced Racist Killer Joseph Paul Franklin

by Mel Ayton

A Tour of the Savage City with T.J. English

by Aaron Leonard

Maybe Add Values Teaching to Our American History Survey Courses?

by Vaughn Davis Bornet

This essay of gratuitous advice recommends seven ideas that in my view should be present in one way or another in an extensive survey course in American History at both the college and secondary school levels.

Why Did China Fall Behind Europe?

by R. Bin Wong

The National Park Service Explores the History of Farm Labor in America

by Frank P. Barajas

Fifty years ago, a single mother from the state of Chihuahua in northern Mexico migrated to southern California with four young daughters.  The family caravanned up and down the state working the agricultural migrant circuit.  That young mother was my grandmother, my abuelita.   

Sam Houston, San Jacinto, and the Coming Civil War

by John Willingham

A 50-Year Perspective—JFK, Richard Bissell, and the Bay of Pigs

by Howard Jones

A Forgotten Site in Florida Where the Bay of Pigs Invaders Trained

by Don Bohning

It’s been a half century since a U.S.-trained Cuban exile brigade landed at the Bay of Pigs on Cuba’s South Coast on April 17, 1961, in a failed attempt to oust Fidel Castro; a controversial operation still being debated today. The main reasons for that failure have been well-chronicled:  a change in the landing site from Trinidad to the Bay of Pigs and the last minute cancellation of air cover as the brigade landed. Largely ignored as part of the operation, is the small, but important, role played by Useppa, a tiny island off Flo

The Bay of Pigs Fiasco After Fifty Years

by Yoav J. Tenembaum

Fifty years ago the Bay of Pigs fiasco marred the beginning of John Kennedy's presidency and led to a reassessment of the foreign policy decision-making process of the United States. A CIA plan inspired, devised and approved under the former president Dwight Eisenhower, it was aimed at launching an invasion of Cuba by a group of exiles with the aim of overthrowing the regime of Fidel Castro.

In Commemorating the Sesquicentennial of the Civil War, the Central Role of Slavery Must Not Be Forgotten

by John Gripentrog

In March 1865, with the Civil War's final days in view, President Abraham Lincoln said plainly in his Second Inaugural Address that "all knew" that slavery "was somehow the cause of the war." Today, as the nation commemorates the war's sesquicentennial, the war's fundamental cause—slavery—is obscured in mythmaking and selective memory. It's time we get it right. Only by facing the past honestly can we as a nation progress toward a more perfect union.

Fort Sumter Sesquicentennial: Charleston Changes Her Tune

by Ethan J. Kytle

Fort Sumter surrendered again this week—150 years after Confederate forces first bombarded the federal installation into submission.  Civil War re-enactors recreated the famous capitulation on the island fort, which sits in the center of the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, in a Thursday morning ceremony.  Once more Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard allowed U.S. Major Robert Anderson and his men to salute their flag before they relinquished control of the fort.

The Third Reich in History: An Interview with Richard Evans

by Aaron Leonard

The Blowback World of Chalmers Johnson

by Sheila K. Johnson

In going through my husband’s files, books, and papers after his death, I’ve been forcibly struck by two things.  First, contrary to what many of his obituaries said, his writings and thoughts were remarkably consistent throughout his life. In other words, he was not a right-winger who became more liberal and outspoken as he got older. More than most people suspected, he was a radical all along, whose intellectual impulses were tempered only by his birth in the Depression year of 1931

Why Visit a Civil War Battlefield?

by Scot Faulkner

“A war was fought. The right side won. What else do we need to know?” That person’s comment was recently posted on one of my websites. Americans have been commemorating the 150th anniversary of our Civil War since October 16, 2009. On that date in 1859 a cataclysmic event wrenched America into its bloodiest war. John Brown’s Raid on Harpers Ferry, was the “September 11” of the 19th century. Commemorating the actual war begins on April 12, 2011 – the sesquicentennial of the bombardment