Historians in the News

Juan Cole says he wouldn’t write a letter of recommendation for a student wanting to study at an Israeli "squatter institution on illegally acquired Palestinian land”

by Juan Cole

But unlike his colleague John Cheney-Lippold, he would write a letter for a student going to Tel Aviv University.

Nicole Hemmer exposes sexual harassment at the Miller Center

"I’ve experienced more harassment than anywhere else I’ve worked."

AHA announces 2018 prize winners!

The prizes will be awarded at the annual convention.  But here's the list now.

National Book Awards finalists selected

The nominees for the non-fiction award include Colin G. Calloway, Victoria Johnson, Jeffrey C. Stewart and Adam Winkler.

In his new book historian Colin G. Calloway reports that George Washington’s Indian legacy was decidedly mixed

Some regarded him as the “Town Destroyer,” while others referred to him as “great father."

This philosopher says historians have been going about their job all wrong

by Alex Rosenberg

We may be hardwired to tell history as a story but neuroscience proves that this isn’t the path to truth, says Alex Rosenberg.

N.C. State historian Charles Ludington reflects on his Kavanaugh testimony

"It was my civic duty.”

Sean Wilentz says the Supreme Court’s legitimacy is now at stake

by Sean Wilentz

"After Kavanaugh’s performance and his strong-armed confirmation, the 5-to-4 decisions that ensue will at least clarify exactly what the long-term right-wing campaign has been all about.” (It’s not originalism.)

A classicist objects to the classics being used to justify misogyny

In her new book Donna Zuckerberg explains how the Alt-Right have adopted the classics and why.

Michael Beschloss Spent 10 Years Studying Presidents at War

The worst parts of that history are still worth worrying about.

Joseph Ellis has a new book out: "American Dialogue: The Founders and Us"

It’s about the "relevance of the views of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and John Adams to some of the most divisive issues in America today.”

Michael Beschloss makes the front page of the Sunday NYT with his LBJ scoop

The scoop?  LBJ rejected Gen. Westmoreland proposal to deploy nuclear weapons in Vietnam. 

Professor David Starkey: Historians need to have loved and lost to understand the past

“What I have done is used my own experience of mourning and of joy.”

Why did Jill Lepore write an epic of U.S. history?

It’s a long story.

Christopher Browning, a leading Holocaust historian, just compared the US to Nazi Germany

“If the US has someone whom historians will look back on as the gravedigger of American democracy, it is Mitch McConnell.”

The Most Famous Teachers in History You Need to Know on World Teachers' Day

Meet some of the most famous teachers in history.

Acts of incivility in antebellum Congress unveiled in Yale historian’s book

Joanne B. Freeman reports that published sources to violence in the antebellum Congress were often veiled. The dirt was in diaries and letters.

Historian says we’ve overlooked the fact that millions of Americans supported Hitler in the 1930s

Bradley Hart’s new book "Hitler’s American Friends: The Third Reich’s Supporters in the United States" argues that the threat of Nazism in the United States before World War II was greater than we generally remember.

Andrew Bacevich takes to the NYT op ed page to charge that authorities overlooked the lessons of Black Hawk Down in 1993

by Andrew J. Bacevich

"The disaster in Somalia offered America a glimpse of the future of warfare. No one listened.”

Russia arrests second historian of Stalin’s Terror

A second Karelian historian, Sergei Koltyrin has been arrested and is facing charges almost identical to those now brought against political prisoner, Yuri Dmitriev.