Historians in the News

Pioneering Chicano Movement TV Show Reemerges after 50 Years in Garage

On a recent August day, Frank Cruz, now 82, thought to himself as he had dozens of times before: “Pendejo, you better do something about those films. It might be too late.”

What Can History Teach about the Future of War and Peace?

Historians have generally been unimpressed by claims made by Stephen Pinker that humanity is enjoying a period of peace. 

To Hold Control in China's Present, Xi Seeks to Rewrite its Past

The Chinese Communist Party's newest official history elevates Xi as a figure of historical significance alongside Mao and Deng Xiaoping, making the country's history an instrument of political power. 

Dorceta Taylor on the History of Racism in the Environmental Movement

The historian of environmental movements discusses how those movements have evolved and been pushed toward examining racist legacies. 

Where Did the Public Toilets Go?

Peter Baldwin offers context for how American cities haltingly adopted and quickly abandoned public toilets, a story that encompasses the racial, gender and class politics of how people interact in urban space. 

Radical Movements and Political Power: Terence Renaud on New Lefts

by Justin H. Vassallo

Terence Renaud's history places the international New Left movements that emerged in the 1960s, and today's left activism, in the context of radical traditions that have sought to avoid hierarchy and rigidity. Questions remain about how ideals and ethics can combine with organizing to change institutions.

Lipstadt "Taken Aback" by Antisemitic Symbols at Charlottesville

Deborah Lipstadt's testimony featured discussion of the historical content of antisemitism; her cross examination by defendant Christopher Caldwell included crass questions about Holocaust jokes.

Lee's Fault: On Allen Guelzo's Biography

by John Reeves

A reviewer concludes that Allen Guelzo's new biography succeeds in evaluating Robert E. Lee's military career but misses in its assessment of his relationship to slavery and his legacy.

We Are Still Feeling the Ecological Impact of Whaling

In one century, whalers killed at least 2 million baleen whales, which together weighed twice as much as all the wild mammals on Earth today. New research suggests this has impacted the ecology of the oceans significantly.

After Paine, Why Did American Secularism Fail?

by Chris Lehmann

Historian Leigh Eric Schmidt chronicles the decline of American secularism; the fate of Thomas Paine's looted corpse stands as a tidy metaphor for the mismatch of secular rationality with the desire for communal ritual. 

Charlottesville Civil Trial Brings Deborah Lipstadt into Court Against Hate Again

In a 48-page report she prepared for the trial, Lipstadt wrote that “this fear of active replacement by the Jew, derived directly from the historical underpinnings of antisemitism, is a central feature of contemporary antisemitism.”

Wilentz: New Book Says Jefferson Davis was Right About the Constitution. What About Lincoln?

by Sean Wilentz

Noah Feldman's new books says that, in 1861, Jefferson Davis was right about the Constitution's sanction of slavery, and only the rupture of the Civil War could amend and reset the document. Sean Wilentz disagrees. 

Records of 320,000 Punjab Soldiers from Great War Uncovered`

The records have the potential to fill gaps in understanding and even dispel popular myths and misunderstandings about the participation of South Asian troops in the British military in World War 1. 

Land of Capital: Jonathan Levy's "Ages of American Capital" Reviewed

by Steven Hahn

"Ages of Capitalism" is one of the first synthetic accounts of the relationship of capitalism and American politics and society, and provides an important vocabulary for a developing field of inquiry. It also, oddly, resonates with the older consensus history that assumed capitalism as a core part of American life.

How Historians Helped Convince Big Business Trump Was Dangerous

Historian Timothy Snyder recounts his role in a November 2020 presentation to business leaders about the authoritarian danger reflected in Trump's lies about the "stolen" election. Did a potential coup fail because CEOs thought it was bad for business? Or is there a change afoot in corporate citizenship?

African American Museum in Georgia Honors Forgotten History

"It all goes back to when I was a child growing up in White Plains," said Mamie Hillman, executive director of the museum. "I always wanted to know — how did I enter into history?"

Partners in Brutality: New Books on the Domestic Slave Trade

by Nicholas Guyatt

New books investigate the brutality of the internal slave trade by focusing on a single firm, Franklin & Armfield, and examine the role of white women in enslaving Black people.

The Historians are (Still) Fighting

by Willam Hogeland

Inside the recent Massachusetts Historical Society dustup between Gordon Wood and Woody Holton over the significance of slavery to the American Revolution, and what it means for the public perception of history. 

“If Black Women Were Free”: An Oral History of the Combahee River Collective

Writer Marian Jones gathers together the recollections of the participants in the 1977 efforts to define the relationship between struggles against sexism, racism and capitalist exploitation and reminds that the group's coinage of the term "identity politics" was meant to bring multiple groups together.

Structural Racism Hinders Efforts to Preserve History of Texas "Freedom Colonies"

Dr. Andrea Roberts of the Texas Freedom Colonies Project says that the history of Black settlements during Reconstruction and Jim Crow is hindered by rules about what sites qualify as "historic."