Recently Published

History on the Radio (or at Least on Your Lap Top)

by Nate DiMeo

I’m a collector of moments.  There’s the one when Truman is handed the letter that tells him he has The Bomb.There’s the one when Stephen Kearny tells the people of Las Vegas, New Mexico that they now live in the United States.When the women realize the other door on the ninth floor of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory is locked.  When Lewis and Clark reach the source of the Missouri, realize there’s no Northwest Passage, but call an audibl

Finally, Too Many Cars

by Carl Abbott

Rushing to beat a deadline, General Motors and Chrysler last Tuesday afternoon filed required restructuring plans with federal officials. Chrysler wants $5 billion more in federal loans to stay afloat. GM needs another $9.1 billion now, with more requests likely down the road. The short-term question of whether the two auto giants warrant a bailout or bankruptcy sidesteps the deeper reality: Americans finally have enough cars. The precipitous plunge in aut

Presidential Ratings ... A Parlor Game?

by Rick Shenkman

You often hear that rating presidents is a parlor game.  I want to take issue with that.  In a parlor game there are rules.  In cards you can count the joker or you can't.  In Charades you cannot speak a word without incurring a penalty.  In checkers and chess you must move the pieces in certain ways and not in others.Rating presidents is an altogether different type of game.  There are no rules.  Should we count what a president does in his priva

The C-SPAN Poll: An Empirical Challenge to the Participants

by Leo P. Ribuffo

I have never liked the practice of rating presidents as if they were rock records on the old American Bandstand TV show. I declined to participate when last asked—for a previous CSPAN poll in 2000. So did several other historians, most notably Alonzo Hamby, whose well reasoned critique of these surveys deserves to be read if he still has it on file and wants to make it available. Such rankings might have some merit if they were less value-laden. To its credit, CSPAN gives a list rather

Top Young Historian: Jason Opel

by Bonnie Goodman

"Really great lectures... good guy too... I'd take another class!"

Darwin’s Great Work Was ...

by Larry DeWitt

History is often made through inadvertence—or at least not quite in the linear way historians imply when they recreate that history in their narratives. The stuff of history in real time is sometimes less grand than it seems in our historical reflections—or at least, than was appreciated at the time. On the day of the occasion of Darwin’s joint bicentenary with Abraham Lincoln, I found myself reflecting not so much on Darwin’s contribution to the theory of evolution, as t

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner:  Barack Obama and the Myth of a Post Racial America

by Ron Briley

Despite the best efforts of Rush Limbaugh to take credit for spoiling the Obama political honeymoon by convincing all Republican members of the House of Representatives to reject the President’s economic stimulus package, public approval rates for the President remain at record highs; leading some to conclude that we have entered a post racial America.  Indeed, there is much to celebrate in electing and inaugurating a black President in a Southern city where, as Obama remarked in his

Can Evangelicals Be Part of a Pro-Choice Consensus? Lessons from the Past

by Blake Ellis

Despite a flurry of articles questioning the potency of the Christian Right in national politics, the movement continues to demonstrate its stranglehold over Republican politicians. The most recent example of its influence was Republicans’ successful effort to remove birth control funding from Barack Obama’s stimulus package. The provision would have made it easier for states to offer contraception through Medicaid to women who are not currently covered by the program. Despite substa

What We Should Learn from the Founders' Decision to Put Off Hard Choices About Slavery

by Douglas R. Egerton

In the summer of 1800, as white Virginians organized to elevate Thomas Jefferson into the Executive Mansion, slaves in half a dozen counties prepared to r

The End of the Ownership Society?

by Marc Goldwein

In his second inaugural address, President Bush offered a vision of an"ownership society" In America's ideal of freedom, citizens find the dignity and security of economic independence… To give every American a stake in the promise and future of our country, we will… build an ownership society. We will widen the ownership of homes and businesses, retirement savings and health insurance - preparing our people for the challenges of life in a free society. By

Barack Obama Didn’t Win the Presidential Debates – And Neither Did John McCain

by Aaron Zelinsky

The 2008 Presidential Election has passed from current events into recent history. From a broader historical perspective, the 2008 presidential debates had little impact on the two major party nominees. Neither Barack Obama nor John McCain committed a slip-up on par with Gerald Ford's supposed gaffe that Poland was"independent." Neither scored the knockout blow of Ronald Reagan's now legendary put down of Jimmy Carter:"There you go again." Neither Sarah Palin nor Joe Biden came close to Lloyd

The Election of Barack Obama and the Politics of Interracial and Same-Sex Marriage

by Peggy Pascoe

The election (and now the inauguration) of Barack Obama has inspired a widespread sense of awe at the scope and scale of change in race relation

Reflections on Rude Behavior at Memorial Museums

by Bonnie J. Morris

     The first time I visited the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., I was excited to see a series of guest-book journals set out for visitors’ comments. A journal-keeper myself since age twelve, I applaud every opportunity of contributing to the public record. Most tourist sites, restaurants and inns keep a guestbook well-displayed to solicit favorable reviews about food and service. But within the pages of the Holoc

Vertigo Years: Living in an Age of Uncertainty

by Philipp Blom

What a first decade for a century! Even before Wall Street collapsed as the speculation bubble burst there was uncertainty everywhere: the United States was embr

The Relevance of Benjamin Harrison's Presidency

by Charles W. Calhoun

The launching of a new administration inevitably invites attention to past presidents, not only for their impact on the country but also for

The Internet and Jefferson's Moose

by David G. Post

In 1995, I wrote a small essay for the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s then-newfangled “website,” entitled “Jefferson in Cyberspace.”  The thesis was this:  the great

Lunar Man-Bats? Nineteenth Century, Meet the Twenty-First

by Matthew Goodman

In the summer of 1835, a newspaper in New York called the Sun managed to convince a majority of the city’s residents that the

Lincoln's Mistaken Neglect of General George H. Thomas

by Benson Bobrick

Lincoln's deep humanity, innate wisdom, and determined leadership during our nation's most trying time, ensure his marmoreal greatness against all detractors, wh

The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln: An interview with John Stauffer

by David Liebers

John Stauffer is Chair of the History of American Civilization at Harvard University.  He is a leading scholar of slavery, protest and interracial relations.  Among his seven books (authored and edited)

The “Nixon Tapes,” an Author, and the American Historical Review

by Robert A. Schneider

Normally, an editor does not expect to learn about the submission of an article to his journal from the front page of the nation’s leading newspaper. Normally, an editor would reasonably expect that a journalist reporting for this paper would ask for the editor’s comments on the nature of the submission. Normally, he would not expect the contents of his letter of rejection to the author of the submission to be broadcast both by the newspaper in question and the major web outlet o