Historians in the News

This Historian Gave Up an Ivy League Professorship

Now Nell Painter Says She Is "the Uncoolest Artist in the World.”

Historian tells the forgotten story of America’s first female Egyptologist

Missouri University's Kathleen Sheppard painstakingly spent two years transcribing the scholar's letters.

Yale’s Timothy Snyder says Russia pioneered “fake news”

And then used it to sow chaos in America.

John Lewis Gaddis Tells the NYT What He’s Reading Now

Whom would you want to write your biography? "The first Yale student to get into my voluminously indiscreet diary when it’s opened for research a hundred or so years from now."

Steve Fraser: On writing personally about class in America

by Steve Fraser

"If class is embedded, often undetected, in the marrow of the national experience, then it should show up in the everyday lives of ordinary people as well. I am an ordinary person and I show up in my own book, in every chapter."

Polish historian says he was forced to switch jobs because of his Holocaust research

Adam Pulawski may have fallen foul of Poland's new Holocaust law.

What Was Missing From Memphis on the 50th Anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s Assassination?

by Simon Balto

Historian Simon Balto says it was references to Black Lives Matter and other successors to the Civil Rights Movement. 

Russian Historian Who Exposed Soviet Crimes Is Cleared in Pornography Case

Yuri A. Dmitriev, gained renown in 1997 for discovering the remains of more than 9,000 victims of Stalinist purges buried in communal pits in Sandarmokh, a forest in northwestern Russia.

Alfred Crosby, ‘Father of Environmental History,’ Is Dead at 87

In the eyes of many of his peers, Alfred W. Crosby was the father of environmental history.

Gil Troy says Jews need to reclaim the word Zionism

by Gil Troy

Even if it doesn't poll well. 

Stanford’s Sam Wineburg takes historians to task for failing to measure what their students are learning

by Sam Wineburg and Joel Breakstone and Mark Smith

Shocking findings suggest even juniors and seniors who major in history don’t know how to put events into historical perspective.

Historian worries that austerity, not #MeToo, will set the future course of the academy

by Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen

"What if that means there are no professorships left in which women can _______ (fill in the blank: achieve self-empowerment, assert their power, continue challenging sexism in academe)?"

NBCC Awards Frances FitzGerald the Nonfiction Prize for "The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America.”

How Donald Trump, a three-times-married libertine, won the presidency with the support of evangelical Christian voters may have confounded pundits, but her book told how it happened.

UK's Index on Censorship warns history is under threat worldwide

In a special edition the non-profit looks at how governments and other powers across the globe are manipulating history for their own ends. Authors include Lucy Worsley and Margaret MacMillan.

‘We Were Madly, Madly in Love’: The Untold Story of MLK’s White Girlfriend

by Patrick Parr

In a new book, writer Patrick Parr explains how he tracked down Betty Moitz.

Barbara Lewalski, 87, Milton Scholar and Barrier Breaker, Is Dead

Professor Lewalski was an accomplished author, teacher, mentor to doctoral students and an enterprising researcher who was named an honored scholar by the Milton Society of America when she was 46.

Timothy Garton Ash: "We have six months to foil Brexit. And here’s how we can do it.”

by Timothy Garton Ash

The British historian still believes Brexit can be undone.

Diana West says the Washington Post wouldn’t publish her rebuttal

by Diana West

Contrary to an article published by the Post, she argues that "KGB Deception Is No Myth."

Stanford’s Priya Satia says "The Whitesplaining of History Is Over”

“The struggle to diversify the academy remains an uphill battle; institutional biases are deeply ingrained, and change evokes nostalgia for times past."

Niall Ferguson says we should be alarmed by the polarization associated with social media

In a fascinating interview he sees dangerous parallels between the birth of the printing press and the establishment off social media.