Historians/History

Remembering the Courage of Martin Luther King, Jr.

by Michael K. Honey

At this time of year we remember King’s positive messages of hope:  the best thing to make of an enemy is a friend; love is at the center of the universe; follow the nonviolence of Jesus and Gandhi.  The current moment also

The Firebombing of Tokyo and Its Legacy

by Bret Fisk and Cary Karacas

More than sixty-five years after the Great Tokyo Air Raid of March 10, 1945, and the subsequent firebombing and destruction of Japan’s cities by the United States Army Air Forces in World War II, a cursory examination of the relevant English-language literature, both popular and academic, reveals a striking lacuna.  Researchers have covered substantial ground in analyzing various historical aspects of the U.S. bombing campaign against Japan.  Specifically, much has been done to situate

Author and Oncologist Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee on the History of Cancer

by Robin Lindley

“Medicine is storytelling,” writes acclaimed cancer specialist and now bestselling medical historian Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of The Emperor of

Teaching Huckleberry Finn in Historical Context

by Ron Briley

On January 16, 2011, author Lorrie Moore published an opinion piece in the New York Times suggesting that Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn be excluded from the high school curriculum as adolescents lack the knowledge and experience to place this controversial text within proper context.  Moore’ piece, along with the decision of NewSouth Books to publish an edition of the Twain classic with slave replacing the word “nigger” in the text (leading to a qui

Puncturing Betty Friedan, but Not the Mystique: An Interview with Stephanie Coontz

In your introduction, you wrote that the book still draws visceral reactions fifty years after its publication. Why? The book was such a giant bestseller in its day, and the t

Mass Consumption Isn't Just All-American—The Nazis Had It, Too

by S. Jonathan Wiesen

Today, no one can deny the importance of consumption to the American economy.  By some counts, consumer spending constitutes over seventy perc

The Mafia and Me: Reflections on Being Italian

by Michael Parenti

Like many others of  Italian-American heritage, I experienced some discomfort when in 1951 Senator Estes Kefauver, a Democrat from Tennessee, launched his highly publicized investigation into the organized rackets, uncovering scores of thugs with Italian surnames.  Subsequent decades produced an endless parade of such rogues whose mugs were repeatedly splashed across the print and broadcast media. I must admit that when it came to names, the mafia operatives really had them:  

Remembrance of General Education Past

by Sheldon M. Stern

Normally, I don’t pay much attention to the new year.  Rather, I often chuckle when recalling Jackie Gleason wishing his viewers “a happy changing of the calendar.”  However this year is different:  2011 marks the fiftieth anniversary of my graduation from college.  In and of itself that fact may not seem so extraordinary, but for me it has a very special resonance.I grew up in tough, working-class district of Brooklyn. My father did piecework in a factory that made men’s caps.  M

Beware the Military-Industrial Complex

by David Greenberg

Fifty years ago, Dwight Eisenhower delivered what has become, with the possible exception of George Washington's departing speech, the best-known presidential farewell address in U.S. history. In his valedictory, Ike famously warned against"unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex."

History is a Real Business on the Web

by Caitlin Aber

History is now at our fingertips.  Literally.  Electronic databases, e-books, and online collections provide instant access to archival and scholarly sources.  The collaborative initiative http://historypin.com enables users to browse and post photos to a communal archive by “pinning” pictures to a Google-powered world map.  Even the iPhone is becoming a historian’s weapon, able to retrieve local antique maps and photos using GPS technology. T

The Faith of—and Our Faith in—George Washington

by Thomas S. Kidd

No historical subject is more debated in the popular media today than the role of faith in the American founding.  These debates often focus on the fai

Channelling George Washington: Benjamin Franklin

by Thomas Fleming

“There’s another fellow from my time who I don’t think is properly appreciated by a lot of Americans:  Ben Franklin.”“How well did you know him?”“We were never close friends.  He was famous

Highlights from the 2011 Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association in Boston

by David Austin Walsh

Index Day 1 Day 2 Day 3Day 4 News Bloggers VideosRelated Links HNN Coverage: Past AHA & OAH Conferences News<

Live Q&A with Deepak Tripathi

You've worked in Afghanistan and Pakistan as a BBC correspondent. How does the Afghanistan of today compare to the pre-civil war Afghanistan of 1978?Before the 1978 communist coup which

The Constitution, Ritual, and History

by Jonathan Dresner

I'm fascinated by constitutions. Founding documents are historical gold: they express the dynamic discourses of a moment and they shape the political and cultural progress of peoples for years, decades, sometimes even centuries to follow. They are sometimes brilliantly constructed systemic compromises, and sometimes they are simply descriptions of the way things work, and sometimes they are failed attempts to stabilize desperate situations. Some of them are inspirational and influential; some are simply technical and obscure; most are a mix. I use constitutions in my teaching and fourteen years ago I may have been the first person to digitize the Meiji and 1947 Constitutions of Japan with my hand-held optical scanner.

Why the Civil War Happened

by Thomas Fleming

As we approach the one hundred fiftieth anniversary of the start of the Civil War, various people are rushing into print to declare that the real cause of the war was slavery.  Th

My Love Affair with Political Cartoons

by Stephen Hess

I fell in love by accident.  It was 1959 and I was writing a book with my mentor from Johns Hopkins, Malcolm Moos.  It would be called Hats in the Ring: The Making of Presidential Candidates.  The problem was t

Native American Repatriation at 20

by Michelle A. Hamilton

The end of 2010 marks the twentieth anniversary of the passing of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) which requires federally funded museums to inventory their collec

Libertarian Fantasies and the Tea Party Movement

by Leslie Rogne Schumacher

“One doesn’t mind things in Albania,” Rose Wilder Lane wrote in 1926 while traveling through Durrës, the country’s largest port.  “There isn’t any time here, only eternity, and in eternity there can’t be any haste or fretting.”  Such she announced the final stage of a journey that began in Paris three weeks earlier, made via a Ford Model T which Lane named “Zenobia,” after the third-century Syrian queen who led a romantically unsuccessful revolt against Rome.  Lane’s object was a long

Haley Barbour's Yazoo City and Mine

by James W. Loewen

The first time I saw Yazoo City was in the summer of 1965.  I spent that summer at Tougaloo College near Jackson, and Yazoo is only 40 miles away, up Highway 49 northwest toward the Mississippi Delta.  The drive was picturesque.  After leaving the Jackson suburbs, Highway 49 was a two-lane road that went up and down the dramatic Loess Hills, covered with kudzu vines, intensely green in early summer.  Right at Yazoo City the Delta begins.  The highway went down a l