Historians in the News

‘JFK,’ by Fredrik Logevall: An Excerpt

Read an excerpt from Fredrik Logevall's new biography of John F. Kennedy touching on the collegiate Kennedy's observations of Europe as World War II began.

Race, Medicine, and the Origins of American Psychiatry (Review)

by Natalie Shibley

Wendy Gonaver's book traces the relationiship between slavery and modern psychiatric medicine. 

'Our Malady': Historian Timothy Snyder On America's Health Care Problem (Audio)

The historian took an unexpected turn into researching the health system when he got suddenly, seriously ill in December 2019. He argues that the for-profit healthcare system exposes a dire conflict between capitalism and liberty.

Centrists Are Pining for a Golden Age that Never Was (Review)

A review of Anne Applebaum's "Twilight of Democracy" argues that the author focuses on the role of nostalgia and personality in driving authoritarianism and breaking up the center-right coalition, but ignores the fact that that the center failed to deliver an improved standard of living to the broad public. 

Why Thomas Jefferson Created His Own Bible

by Peter Manseau

The "Jefferson Bible," representing Thomas Jefferson's efforts to excise the supernatural and miraculous from the New Testament, is an important document of American religious culture. The story of its preservation by Cyrus Adler and John Fletcher Lacey is a remarkable tale as well that reflects changes in the political nature of American religion.

For the First Time, America May Have an Anti-Racist Majority

by Adam Serwer

Atlantic writer Adam Serwer argues that people who want to understand this year should look not to 1968, but to 1868, when a moment of potential for establishing interracial democracy through government intervention seemed possible. 

Is America a Myth?

Writer Robin Wright looks to historians Richard Kreitner and Colin Woodard to explain that the idea of a unified American nation has not been the historical norm. 

For Generations Black Women Have Envisioned a Better, Fairer American Politics

Historian Karin Wulf interviews Martha S. Jones, author of the newly-released "Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All," on the role Black women have historically played in advancing egalitarian politics.  

Groomed to Be President: David Kennedy Reviews Fredrik Logevall's JFK Bio

Fredrik Logevall's new book, the first of two volumes on the life of JFK, pushes back against perceptions of the young Kennedy as an accidental politician or intellectual lightweight, and describes the way world events shaped his worldview.

The Anti-Democratic Origins of Voter Prediction (Review)

A review of Jill Lepore's "If Then," which finds the roots of contemporary political messaging in a 1960s company's pioneering efforts to apply computer modeling to voter behavior. 

Washington Post Journalist Radley Balko on Civil Rights, Militarized Policing, and the Power of Video

Journalist and historian of policing Radley Balko discusses the changing perception of police and police abuse in an interview with Reason's Nick Gillespie. 

Fascism Scholar Says U.S. Is 'Losing Its Democratic Status'

Political theorist Jason Stanley discusses where the United States today fits into his definitions of fascism. Trump's claims to personally protect Americans from humiliation, the rise of conspiratorial thinking, and the fragility of democratic processes are not encouraging signs.

Scholar Strike Forming On Social Media May Be Omen Of Things To Come

A social-media organized effort by professors represents a new effort to connect academic work to activism for justice. 

Professor’s Death after Collapsing in Virtual Class is a ‘Sad Reminder that the Virus is Real,’ Friend Says

Paola De Simone succumbed to COVID-19 while teaching her world history course remotely. Students and colleagues say her efforts to teach despite illness showed her dedication and courage. 

Beyond Jermag Yev Sev: A Roundtable on Armenian American Identity

A dialogue with a historian of Armenians in the United States shows that the boundaries of the "white race" have shifted historically and been determined not by biology but by politics played out in immigration courts. 

A Coded Word From the Far Right Roils France’s Political Mainstream

Historians Pascal Blanchard and Pap Ndiaye say that the hot-button term "ensauvagement" reflects France's unrecognized history of colonialism and the prevalent belief that the French helped elevate the people they colonized; the present-day right wing uses the term to imply that immigrants from France's former colonies require control and repression.

Overlooked No More: Before Kamala Harris, There Was Charlotta Bass

Charlotta Bass led a remarkable life as a journalist and activist that, in many ways, helped lay the foundation for a figure like Harris, the first Black woman and first person of Indian descent to be nominated on a major-party ticket.

Topics You’re Not Supposed To Discuss At Dinner: The Role Of Evangelical Religion In U.S. Foreign Policy (Podcast)

Lauren Turek, Ashlyn Hand and William Inboden discuss how, as Turek documents, in the late 20th century, the specific notion of human rights intersected with evangelical missionaries and their perceptions of the risks associated with communism and other important foreign policy questions, and were able to organize and influence U.S. foreign policy in a new and important way.

How Textbooks Taught White Supremacy

"I came across one textbook that declared on its first page, “This is the White Man’s History.” At that point, you had to be a dunce not to see what these books were teaching."

Terror and Technology, From Dynamite to Drones (Review)

Audrey Cronin's new book warns that terrorist networks are less likely to employ cutting-edge technology than to adapt widely-available tools to new destructive ends; security experts are still surprised by this repeating pattern.