Roundup

Syria's Civil War Could Stabilize Its Region

by Daniel Pipes

Amid tragedy and horror, as populations adapt to the brutal imperatives of modern nationalism, all four countries are becoming a bit more stable.

The Great Game in the Holy Land

by Michael Schwartz

How Gazan Natural Gas Became the Epicenter of An International Power Struggle

“He got intimidated by the right”: Orlando Patterson on President Obama, race & black culture

by Ian Blair

50 years after the Moynihan report, renowned Harvard sociologist talks Ferguson, respectability politics and Cosby

The Secret History of the EPA

by Carol Van Strum

The EPA, created with much fanfare by Richard Nixon in 1970, was an agency crippled at birth by inadequate funding, political hypocrisy, and laws protecting industry profits above all.

Fidel Castro and Apartheid

by Matt Peppe

Cuba’s intervention in Angola managed to change the course of that country and reverberate throughout Africa.

Sticks, Stones, and American Exceptionalism

by R. B. Bernstein

How are we to take polemicists’ rhetoric seriously, when it celebrates a past and a nation that never was?

The Troubled History of the Foreskin

by Jessica Wapner

Why Americans adopted circumcision and when.

Slate’s Michael Kinsley fell for the false claim that Israelis massacred Palestinians in Lydda in 1948

by Martin Kramer

To read his account you would think that the Yiftah Brigade of the Palmah conducted itself like a gang of roving génocidaires.

The Real American Exceptionalism

by Alfred W. McCoy

From Torture to Drone Assassination, How Washington Gave Itself a Global Get-Out-of-Jail-Free Card

Proposed 1920s orphanage study just one example in history of scientific racism

by Michael Yudell

Respected scientists within the recently formed National Research Council proposed building orphanages to study nature vs nurture with respect to racial differences.

One Standard, Not Two, for Christianity and Islam

by Jeffrey Herf

The President spoke the truth recently when he said “terrible deeds” have been committed in the name of Christianity. We should be equally frank in saying that terrible deeds are now being committed in the name of Islam.

The harrowing story of Masako Shinjo Summers Robbins

by Masako Shinjo Summers Robinson

How a child born in Osaka, sold by her father into slavery, ended up in America

A nation united in mourning Lincoln? Think again

by Ruth Graham

From anger to glee, historian Martha Hodes’s new book uncovers Americans’ real reactions to the president’s assassination

Remembering Malcolm X Fifty Years Later

by Daniel Pipes

Malcolm X was anything but mainstream and the passage of a half century should not soften attitudes toward him.

Did the Torture Report Give the C.I.A. a Bum Rap?

by David Cole

Asking whether torture works is like asking whether slavery works. It’s the wrong question.

These 23 Unbelievable Facts Will DESTROY Your Understanding Of Time

Facts like these listed here show us how distorted our perception of time can be.

The bizarre war against AP U.S. history courses

by Catherine Rampell

It seems strange to organize an educational system around what can’t be taught to children.

Roundup Top 10!

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

Jeb Bush on Foreign Policy: Peddling old Iraq Myths Again

by Juan Cole

Jeb Bush’s maiden voyage into foreign policy was painful to watch, a hodgepodge of exaggerated bogeymen, vague ideals, inaccurate assertions, and bad history.

The Oklahoma A.P. Test Controversy Masks the Real Scandal of American History Education

by Jonathan Zimmerman

The great elephant in the A.P. classroom: Many college-level instructors don’t teach these skills in their own courses.