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Blog
Why Stephen Colbert's Late Night Monologue Effectively Recapped the Latest Democratic Debates
Steve Hochstadt
Colbert tells obviously fake stories, but gives us a better picture of reality.
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Gloria Steinem, the Women’s Movement and a Big Question
Bruce Chadwick
Gloria, A Life, the new play by Emily Mann about women’s rights activist Gloria Steinem leaves a big, big question.
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How the Kikotan Massacre Prepared the Ground for the Arrival of the First Africans in 1619
Gregory D. Smithers
English (and ultimately, United States) colonialism was (and is) built not only with the labor of stolen bodies from Africa, but the stolen lands of Native Americans.
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The Stasi's Cold War Espionage Campaign Inside the Church
Elisabeth Braw
How the Stasi infiltrated churches to suppress dissent in the German Democratic Republic.
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Trump—A Wannabe Dictator in Training
John C. Waugh
Trump has suggested how good it might be for him to enjoy a third term, perhaps more, even though the Constitution forcefully forbids it.
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The Native Americans Who Assisted the Underground Railroad
Roy E. Finkenbine
Studying the role of Native Americans in assisting freedom seekers in the pre-Civil War Midwest requires the historian to assemble an archive from a range of disparate sources.
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S.F. History Museum Highlights America’s First Immigration Restriction: The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882
James Thornton Harris
An interview with Tamiko Wong, the executive director of the Chinese Historical Society of America Museum about the exhibit Chinese American: Exclusion/Inclusion.
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Expansion and Motivation: Frontiers and Borders in the Past and Present of the United States and Russia
Robert W. Thurston
Greg Grandin's The End of the Myth, David McCullough's The Pioneers, and Angela Stent's Putin’s World push us to consider and compare the history of the frontier and borders.
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The Apolitical Antidote to Unjust Politics
Steele Brand
Throughout history apolitics guided the greatest minds living in the most unjust times.
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Eastern European Historian Emanuela Grama on Romania’s Heritage
Erik Moshe
“The best historian is a kind of magician; one that can transform a puzzle of disparate dusty documents into a persuasive analysis and an electric narrative.”
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Celebrating the 200th Birthday of Prince Albert
Seán Williams
This year historians, tourists, and a fair few locals will be celebrating in Schloss Roseau. Why?
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Blog
The History of Impeachment and Why Democrats Need to Act Now
Ronald L. Feinman
If Democrats don’t take action, history will record that the Democratic Party refused to see the long term danger of Trum...
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What Historians Are Saying: 2020 Election Democratic Primary Debates
Tweets, retweets, and likes by historians discussing the Democratic Primary Debates.
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Blog
The Divine Right Presidency
Steve Hochstadt
King George III said during the American Revolution that “A traitor is everyone who d...
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Roundup Top 10!
This week's broad sampling of opinion pieces found on the Internet, as selected by the editor of HNN.
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Trump’s Wall and the Aggrandizement of Despots
Walter G. Moss
Egotistical rulers like Trump often have grandiose architectural plans. Hitler had his “Germania," Mao had his “10 Great Buildings," and Stalin had his never-built Palace of Soviets.
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The American Left Needs a Contemporary Thad Stevens
Van Gosse
Protest, “resistance,” and speaking truth to power are no longer enough. Leftists need to think about how to wield power in our complex political system and Thad Stevens offers a valuable blueprint.
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The Democratic Presidential Candidates’ Ivy League Problem – and the Party Divide It Signals
Daniel K. Williams
Every Democratic presidential nominee for the past thirty years has had a degree from either Harvard or Yale.
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A Nation Headed to Civil War: The Compromise of 1850
Sidney Blumenthal
An excerpt from ALL THE POWERS OF EARTH by Sidney Blumenthal.
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What We Can Learn About Surviving Frauds Like Trump from Titus Oates
David P. Barash
The true story of Titus Oates, although horrifying and downright infuriating, should give us hope that the US, too, can recover from You Know Who, just as England did from Titus Oates.
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The U.S. a Christian Nation? Not According to the Founders!
Harlow Giles Unger
Pence and Sessions are but two prominent Americans in and out of politics today who continue refueling a centuries-old controversy over the role of religion in American life.
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1933 May Be Closer than We Think
Frank Domurad
Increasing cultural, social and political continuities between Weimar and America should give us serious concern in assessing the fate of these two democracies as part of an analogous historical phenomenon.
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The Cuban Missile Crisis and the Trollope Ploy Myth
Sheldon M. Stern
What we often get wrong about the Cuban Missile Crisis.
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Beyond the Vote, The Suffragists Helped Launch Modern Business Franchising
Jane R. Plitt
We should also acknowledge the role of the suffrage movement in supporting the launch of modern franchising begun by Martha Matilda Harper in 1891.
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Sir Ian Kershaw on His Latest Book, Brexit, and the Future of Europe
David O’Connor
"The EU has come a long way and, as Brexit shows, the networks built up over previous decades are extremely complex."
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Hindus-Muslim clash 72 years after Britain left India
B. Z. Khasru
In light of India's recent decision to annex the Muslim-majority Kashmir state, it's important to understand the region's history.
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“The thinking power called an idea”: Thomas Jefferson and the Right to Patents
M. Andrew Holowchak
“Every discovery which multiplies the subsistence of man, must be a matter of joy to every friend to humanity.”
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How The Media Covered Woodstock – and How Woodstock Changed The Media
Harlan Lebo
Woodstock was a milestone – not just in coverage of the music scene, but also in broader media exploration of social and economic issues that affect younger audiences.
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Blog
Seeing Our Environment
Steve Hochstadt
The so-called age gap in climate consciousness is a less hopeful sign for the future than one might think.
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Roundup Top 10!
This week's broad sampling of opinion pieces found on the Internet, as selected by the editor of HNN.
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Thou Shalt Not Ration Justice
Pamela Metzger and Andrew Davies
The Norman Lefstein legacy: passionate, tireless efforts for indigent defense reform.
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Can testimony against Epstein still have an impact without him present?
Norman J.W. Goda
The 1987 trial of Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie offers valuable historical context to how victim testimony without the accused present can still have a powerful impact.
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Searching for El Dorado: The Colonial Fantasy of the Amazon
Ed Simon
There is a direct ideological thread that runs from the early explorers of the Caribbean and South America and the current environmental catastrophe unfolding in the Brazilian rainforest as fire burns its way across the length of a land which was once called paradise.
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Why Conservatives Are So Upset About the 1619 Project
Adam Bruno
Conservative pundits conceive of the past as determined by the actions of “great men,” defined by heroic and noble acts of patriotism from its citizens, and generally memorable for its unifying moments not its shameful ones. The 1619 Project counters all these notions.
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Restricting Automatic Citizenship to Children Born to Americans Serving Abroad Is Only the Latest Effort by Trump to Dismantle Birthright Citizenship
Derek Litvak
Trump and conservatives are attempting a wholesale constitutional revolution by dismantling birthright citizenship. Here's why birthright citizenship is so historically important.
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The Latest G-7 Summit Showcases Trump's Foreign Policy Failures
Walter L. Hixson
There is still time for Trump to reverse his legacy of diplomatic ineptitude. If he fails to do so he may well go down in history as the most feckless foreign policy president in American history.
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The Fight against Climate Change Must Become the New Abolitionism
Erik Curren
Why has it taken so long for the climate movement to accomplish so little? And, since the clock is ticking to curb runaway global heating, how can we do better in the future?
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Where Are the Hong Kong Protests Headed?
Kevin M. Shanley
After ten weeks of protest by students and others in Hong Kong the crisis seems to be spiraling toward a tragic climax.
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The Carter Presidency Reconsidered
Richard Moe
“We told the truth, we obeyed the law, we kept the peace and we championed human rights.”
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Sparta and the Collapse of Greece
Jennifer T. Roberts
Why the Peloponnesian War went on longer than is commonly thought.
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The Value of History Podcasts: An Interview with Historian and Podcaster Mike Duncan
Scott Benigno
"Wherever we’re headed history will always thrive.”
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Writing Fiction about Real People
Gill Paul
The best novels about real people make us re-evaluate the subject and perhaps alter our preconceived ideas.
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A New History of Islamic Empires Defined Through Illustrious Cities
Erik Moshe
"History constantly refreshes and reinvents itself and that is its abiding power. It has a built-in resistance to obsolescence."
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The Problem with The Rosa Parks Barbie
Andrea S. Johnson
Rosa Parks wasn't just a tired seamstress with aching feet. The true story of Rosa Parks that historians have worked hard to reconstruct is continually lost in public consumption.
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Roundup Top 10!
This week's broad sampling of opinion pieces found on the Internet, as selected by the editor of HNN.
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The Rabbi, the Telegram, and the Holocaust
Rafael Medoff
Seventy-seven years ago today, a telegram bearing a horrifying and unforgettable message reached America’s foremost Jewish leader. It revealed the first comprehensive details about the systematic mass murder that would come to be known as the Holocaust
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50 Years ago, the KGB weaponized the fire at Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque to sow discord between Israel and the United States
Oren Nahari
This discovery comes from a document obtained by historians Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez. A rent-a-crowd protest in India was aimed to affect the Egyptian-Israeli War of Attrition.
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A Voting History of American Jews From 1916 to Today
Ronald L. Feinman
Historically, Democratic presidential candidates have received a majority of the Jewish vote.
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The Cultural History of Woodstock and a Message of Hope
Harlan Lebo
The Woodstock weekend marked the beginning of a new era in America, a new consciousness about the way the world could be.
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