Historians in the News

Rise of European Populists Today Echoes Dark Dreyfus Era, Jewish Historian Warns

In new book ‘Twilight of Democracy,’ Anne Applebaum describes how her former friends helped bring about the Trump era, Brexit, and authoritarian governments in Poland and Hungary.

Getting Creative With Course Assessments

When navigating online education, faculty should stray away from traditional exams and opt for innovative assignments that will engage students rather than stress them out.

Women Would Abolish Child Labor (and Other Anti-Suffrage Excuses)

A host of reactionary forces let by southern segregationists and big businesses mounted a last-ditch campaign to thwart the Nineteenth Amendment, raising false accusations of bribery and corruption against state officials who supported the amendment. When that failed, they took their case all the way to the Supreme Court, to no avail. 

Lies Our Country Told Us: An Online Lecture Featuring James Loewen and David Pilgrim, September 3

HNN contributor James Loewen and David Pilgrim will discuss the politics and history of mascots, memorials, and everyday symbols.

A Bibliography of Historians' Responses to COVID-19

The bibliography includes commentary and publications by historians in both scholarly and popular periodical literature; recorded lectures and webcasts; and digitized primary source materials from past epidemics and pandemics. 

What A 1924 KKK Gathering in Tacoma Tells us about White Nationalism in the U.S. Today

Managing director of the Tacoma Historical Society Michael Lafreniere never expected to unearth a glimpse into the Klan’s history in Washington state, and more particularly Tacoma.

The Great White Heist (The Other Reason For Reparations)

Slavery is the usual argument for reparations. But there’s another rationale.

Race and Reconciliation Initiative Begins Study into TCU’s History

“We want to provide critical perspective, we want to deepen understanding so that we can really take on this idea of reconciliation and healing,” said RRI chair Frederick Gooding Jr.

Reaganland' Author Revisits The Roots Of American Conservatism (audio)

Author Rick Perlstein chronicles the events that propelled Ronald Reagan to the White House in 1980. He says that a certain "viciousness" has always been part of the conservative Republican coalition.

Civil War And Southern Charm: How Hollywood Takes On The South (audio)

Film experts Marsha Gordon and Laura Boyes talk about watching films that gloss over the darker parts of Southern history, but they also explore how more contemporary films resonate with viewers as true to their own experiences.

Why Hurricane Katrina Was Not a Natural Disaster

by Nicholas Lemann

Fifteen years ago, New Orleans was nearly destroyed. A new book by Tulane historian Andy Horowitz suggests that the cause was decades of bad policy—and that nothing has changed.

Athens’s Revolutionaries: A Review Of "Cool Town"

Alex Sayf Cummings reviews Grace Elizabeth Hale's "Cool Town" on the rise of 1980s alternative culture in Athens, Georgia, for the blog of the Urban History Association. 

Civil War History: A Call to Action

The Journal of the Civil War Era urges historians to mobilize on September 26 to correct the misinformation delivered by public monuments and memorials.   

New Video Shows Largest Hydrogen Bomb Ever Exploded

Although the Soviet Union succeeded in testing a hydrogen bomb more than three times more powerful than the largest U.S.-tested weapon, most military leaders in the cold war sought to make the weapons smaller for strategic reasons. Recently declassified Soviet video shows the test. 

The Burning House: How Federal Housing Programs Failed Black America (Review)

by Marcia Chatelain

"As Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor shows in Race for Profit, we are also only beginning to reckon with the complex network of bankers, real estate agents, and federal agencies that used the rhetoric of equality to obscure a set of race-to-the-bottom schemes that sought to extract as much wealth as possible from poor Black Americans."

‘Please Don’t Convert to Whiteness’: Johann N. Neem on Current Trends in Racism and Antiracism

Historian Johann N. Neem, an immigrant from India, decries the white supremacy unleashed by Trump but questions whether trendy antiracism discourse is encouraging white progressives to uphold the ideal of an America open to all in an interview.   

Blue Bloods: America's Brotherhood of Police Officers

by Eve L. Ewing

“How many unions are there where you’re assigned a gun and told you can shoot people?” Philadelphia district attorney Larry Krasner asked me during a phone interview. “I mean, they have superpowers. They are given superpowers over the lives and freedom of other people. Over the integrity of their bodies.” 

The Never-Ending War Between the White House and the Press

A review of Harold Holzer's new book "The President vs. The Press."

Are Your Tweets Historic? Meet the Librarians Who Decide.

The Library of Congress's Web Department works to archive tweets and ephemeral websites that are significant to today's society so they are not lost to history. 

Women’s Clubs and the “Lost Cause”

Women’s clubs were popular after the Civil War among white and Black women. But white clubwomen used their influence to ingrain racist curriculum in schools.