Recently Published

The Defiant Woman at the Center of New York's First Abortion Battle

by Alan J. Singer

Carolyn Ann Trow Lohman, better known as Madame Restell, defied the authority of the medical establishment and moral crusaders to help women obtain abortions. Justice Alito's misuse of history to justify the Dobbs decision shows the need to remember her. 

Don't Forget the Private Sorrows of Ukraine

by Walter G. Moss

In Ukraine, as with all wars, statistical accounts of death and destruction risk depersonalizing the killing and obscuring the humanity of the victims. 

Youth Failed by Their Leaders: How the Palestinians Lost Their Way

by Alon Ben-Meir

Four generations of Palestinian leadership have failed their youth through intransigence and a failure to distinguish between Israel and the occupation. 

Why We Don't Remember Edith Galt Wilson as the "First Woman President"

by Richard Bluttal

While the First Lady ran the executive branch while concealing the extent of Woodrow Wilson's ill health after a stroke, her unofficial stewardship raises too many questions about secrecy and its consequences to be celebrated today. 

Whose "Red Lines"?

by Lawrence Wittner

Far from promoting clarity and stability, when powerful nations declare "red lines" in their dealings with the world they declare their intentions to impose their will on others. Peace-promoting red lines must be drawn by more robust international cooperation. 

What Airports Can Tell Us About Histories of Regional Development

by Eric Porter

From the perspective of travelers, airports appear as generic "non-places." But for people who aren't just passing through—entrepreneurs, activists, and especially workers—their particularity makes them sites of struggle that shape the life of a region. Historians have much to learn from them, too. 

Suppression of Public Commemoration is an Early Warning of Authoritarian Abuse of History

by Ruben Zeeman

While several laws pertaining to historical memory have been passed under nationalist regimes in Europe, other authoritarian societies actively use other laws as an excuse to suppress inconvenient historic commemorations, reflecting a broad and growing pattern of subordinating history to power.

Kara Walker Disrupts the Visual History of the Civil War in New Exhibition

by Allison Robinson and Ksenia M. Soboleva

The artist Kara Walker's 2005 series of prints merged the historical illustrations that shaped Americans' understanding of the Civil War in its immediate aftermath and in the 1890s with her original subversive take on the tradition of silhouette art to highlight the erasure of Black experiences of war. Two curators are putting Walker's work in context in a new exhibition.

1918's Armistice Offers an Unsettling Model for Ending the Ukraine Conflict

by James Thornton Harris

Marshal Foch of France described the Treaty of Versailles as a "an armistice for 20 years." In Ukraine, the end of the shooting war will be only the first step in securing peace. 

Can Rebellion Be Too Big To Fail? Reflections on Jefferson Davis and Trump

by Wallace Hettle

If Jefferson Davis's release on bail in 1867 and pardon before trial in 1868 seemed to signal his diminishment as a national figure, the rise of the Lost Cause mythology with Davis as its martyr showed it was a serious mistake to excuse insurrection. 

How Israel Lost its Way

by Alon Ben-Meir

After Israel has raised several generations as warriors and occupiers, has the nation lost sight of the toll on its own youth and the consequences for peace? 

Arctic Explorer, Nazi-Fighter, Iconoclast: Peter Freuchen's Case for "Most Interesting Man in the World"

by Reid Mitenbuler

A biographer contents that an unlikely celebrity from the early twentieth century should inspire people today to take risks and embrace a humanism that doesn't depend on loyalty to party or ideology. While this without-a-net kind of public discussion is increasingly rare today, it's what makes people interesting.

America Fought Its Own Battle Over Books Before it Fought the Nazis

by Brianna Labuskes

The Armed Services Editions paperback books were wildly popular among World War II servicemembers. But they became symbols of American freedom to read in the war against fascism only after a bitter domestic battle about the works and topics that would be permitted. 

Why a Spy Balloon Inspires Such Fear and Fascination

by Alison Byerly

The ambiguity of our response to the Chinese spy balloon reflects the fact that balloons have always combined elements of technological innovation, spectacle, and surveillance. Today, they may be an unsettling visible symblol of the vast, mostly invisible, surveillance we live under. 

Between Perpetrating a Hoax and Charging One: American Politics in the Waste Land

by Jed Rasula

The centenary of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land reminds readers of the rumors that the poem was published as a hoax. While pulling off a hoax takes cleverness, invoking the word to dismiss inconvenient facts is an abdication of responsibility that plagues political culture today.

Russia's Courageous War Resisters

by Lawrence Wittner

While most Russians have chosen silence in the wake of Putin's harsh anti-dissent measures, and many military-aged men have opted to leave the country, a core of protesters have braved violence and imprisonment to denounce the Ukraine invasion. 

Scientists: The Unsung Heroes of the American West

by Elliott West

From animal husbandry to epidemiology, the work of scientists was critical to America's conquest of the west, while the region also provided critical evidence in the debate over Darwin's theory of natural selection. 

Recent Discovery Shows Women Scholars have been Hiding in Plain Sight of History

by Joel Marie Cabrita

Advances in imaging technology have revealed that an 8th century woman named Eadburg inscribed her name on the pages of a manuscript, claiming status as a woman of letters. The revelation also calls for more creative methods to find women scholars and assess their contributions. 

The Case For Calling the Language "American"

by Ilan Stavans

The history of pragmatic adaptation that built the American form of English is reflected in its present status as the world's second language. It's not jingoistic, just accurate, to declare the particularity of the American tongue. 

The Heroes of Ripley, Ohio

by David Goodrich

David Goodrich bicycled 3,000 miles along the routes of the Underground Railroad, encountering the places of history from a new perspective. This excerpt follows him through the Ohio-Kentucky borderland and across the river that marked free territory.