The Latest 
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1,056 Feet: Why I Needed the 1619 Project Growing Up
Derek Litvak
The 1619 Project is not interested in retelling America’s founding story. It seeks to forge a new one. The people who contributed to this effort know full well those like myself, who grew up in the drainage ditches of America, in the long shadow of a bright star, need to hear this history. Demands to “stick to the facts” often sideline or silence our story.
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Twelve Scholars Critique the 1619 Project and the New York Times Magazine Editor Responds
Scholars composed a letter to The New Times Magazine concerning 'The 1619 Project.' The NYTM editor, Jake Silverstein, responded but the NYTM declined to publish the letter and his response. The scholars created a reply and Silverstein had no objection to publishing the exchange in another venue. It is published here.
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Modeling Grief: the Death of Children in Historical Perspective
Maria E. Doerfler
As students of the history of emotions have argued, even the deepest and most primal feelings require models for experiencing one's own suffering and for responding appropriately to others’. The relative lack of such models in contemporary American society contrasts sharply with other eras' approach to voicing bereavement.
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Justin Amash On the Exquisite Veracity of Truth Telling
Dan Roberts
Justin Amash is preceeded by three other courageous American politicians — Alexander Butterfield, Margaret Chase Smith, and Edmond Ross — who were unwavering champions of truth-telling, consequences be damned.
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Could the Climate Crisis Be “The Good News of Damnation”?
Lawrence Wittner
There is no other solution to the onrushing climate catastrophe than for people and nations to forget their tribal animosities and start behaving as part of a world society. The climate crisis, like the prospect of nuclear annihilation, really is “the good news of damnation.” And we can only overcome it by working together.
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The Film “1917” and the Allegory of the Wooden-Headed
James Ottavio Castagnera
Viewed with one eye on this current context, “1917” can surmount its surface characterization as an exciting “war movie” to become an allegory.
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BBC Whitewashes U.S. Refusal to Bomb Auschwitz
Rafael Medoff
The new BBC documentary about the question of bombing Auschwitz deserves an award—for creative fiction. Through omissions, distortions, and “re-enactments” of conversations with imaginary dialogue inserted for effect, the BBC has made a shambles of the historical record concerning this important issue.
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Islamophobia Goes Global
Zaman Stanizai
At the end of the Cold War impasse, however, as the Berlin Wall came crumbling down, the ideological divide of the East-West was replaced by the Middle East-West racial, religious, and cultural divide that culminated in the election of Donald Trump and the rise of neo-fascism parading as super-nationalism.
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How Neville Chamberlin Misread Hitler and Allowed the Third Reich to Threaten the World Order
Jeff Roquen
In the new and magisterial study Appeasement: Chamberlain, Hitler, Churchill and the Road to War, Tim Bouverie incisively reconstructs the ideological landscape of post-WWI Britain to explain how Chamberlain and other politicians and pundits misread Hitler and ultimately allowed the Third Reich to threaten the entire world order.
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History & Law: GW History Professor Jennifer Wells Discusses How Her Study of Law Has Informed her Career in History
Mark Detlor
"I’m more much analytical as a result of law and try to immediately make an assertion and back it up with evidence when I write; I think it’s a very effective way of writing but I’m not sure that I would have mastered it had I not gone to law school."
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A Museum For The People: Anacostia Community Museum
Laura Gonzalez
A "Museum For The People" symposium was organized by the Anacostia Community Museum to discuss how museums and community orgs can create inclusive spaces for dialogue, action, collaboration, and reflection.
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What Dreams of Canada Tell Us About Race in America
April Rosenblum
At a time when American casualties in Vietnam were disproportionately African American, most of those who successfully made it to Canada to resist the draft were white.
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The History of Presidential Misconduct Beyond Watergate and Iran-Contra
HNN Staff
At the AHA, James Banner, Kathryn Olmstead, Kevin Kruse, and Jeremi Suri discussed how they revived a long forgotten report on presidential misconduct.
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The History Behind the Border and Immigrant Detention Centers
HNN Staff
Families are separated at the border and people are indefinitely detained in overcrowded facilties. How a panel at this year's AHA conference examined the history of immigration.
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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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Blog
Reflecting on Martin Luther King Jr.'s Dream and Legacy
Steve Hochstadt
Two authors of distinguished books on the history of race in America just wrote articles for the New York Times for Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday. Michelle Alexander and Richard Rothstein...
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What Will the Museums of the Future Be Like?
Help the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History by taking this brief survey to share what you’d like to see from *your* National Museum.
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Four Speeches by Dr. King That Can Still Guide Us Today
Alan Singer
Martin Luther King, Jr. challenged the war in Vietnam, U.S. imperialism, and laws that victimized working people and the poor, not just racial discrimination.
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Ross Douthat's Prescription for Academia Won't Solve the Real Problem
Ed Simon
Humanities departments have shrunk, tenure track jobs have disappeared, and the academy has increasingly come to rely upon an exploited underclass of contingent, part-time faculty. The argument of who exactly is responsible for this state of affairs rages on, but New York Times columnist Ross Douthat insists he knows the answer.
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George Orwell, 70 Years Later
John Rodden
Would the visionary author of Nineteen Eighty-Four have ever imagined that George Orwell might become the most important writer since Shakespeare and the most influential writer who ever lived?
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1917: The War Movie at Its Very Best
Bruce Chadwick
The movie is a story within a story – the two men within the greater war
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Edmund G. Ross Was a Profile in Impeachment Corruption, not Courage
David O. Stewart
The current impeachment proceedings have revived the historical error of proclaiming Kansas Senator Edmund G. Ross a hero for providing the vote that saved President Andrew Johnson’s job after the April 1868 impeachment trial.
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Jimmy Carter and The Myth That Gave the Iowa Caucuses Their Political Power
Wallace Hettle
Carter focused on the state and did well in the caucuses, which set him, an unknown, on the path to the nomination. Presidential hopefuls have flocked to the state ever since. However, Carter’s story is not quite that simple.
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The World is Losing another Historic Generation
Robert Mark Spaulding
We cannot prevent the passing away of China’s last generation from the pre-communist era, but we can do our part in helping to preserve the ancient culture they knew, so that it does not vanish completely with them.
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Poles Apart: Putin, Poland and the Nazi-Soviet Pact
Geoffrey Roberts
As the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II approaches, two of that war’s main victims – Poland and Russia – are once again embroiled in a highly emotional dispute about its origins. At the heart of the matter is the perennial controversy about the Nazi-Soviet pact of 23 August 1939.
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Strange Obsession: President Trump's Obama Complex
Robert Brent Toplin
While Trump’s dislike of Obama is complex and multifaceted, his behavior at the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner may reveal an important source of the hostility.
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A Courageous Catholic Voice Against Antisemitism
Stephen H. Norwood and Rafael Medoff
As the harassment and beatings of Jews in the streets of Boston reached epidemic levels in 1943, one hundred Jewish boys and girls, ages 12 to 16, sent a poignant petition to the mayor.
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Remembering Dennis Showalter, Grandmaster of Military History
Paul A. Thomsen
On the evening of December 30, 2019, Dennis Showalter, a noted scholar of German, American, and military history, fought his last battle and rode off on a pale horse.
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A Play About Historical Reenactors Grapples With American Identity
Bruce Chadwick
Talene Monahon’s new play, How to Load a Musket, takes a deep, hard look at the re-enactors of two wars, the American Revolution and the Civil War.
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Digesting History: A Conversation with the Museum of Food and Drink’s Curatorial Director Catherine Piccoli
Chelsea Connolly
Food historian Catherine Piccoli describes how this Brooklyn museum encourages its visitors to literally "digest" history.
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The Supreme Court Historical Society: An interview with the President
Sam Mastrianni
An interview with the President of The Supreme Court Historical Society.
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Do Morals Matter in Foreign Policy?
Joseph S. Nye, Jr.
Examining 14 presidencies since 1945 shows that a radically skeptical view of morality is bad history. Morals did matter.
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Blog
Chief Justice John Roberts' Predecessors: The Supreme Court Chief Justices Who Presided Over Previous Impeachment Trials
Ronald L. Feinman
As Chief Justice John Roberts, appointed by President George W. Bush in 2005, readies himself for his historic role as the presiding judg...
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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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Stepping Back From the Brink of War
Alon Ben-Meir
Trump’s order to kill General Soleimani is one of the most reckless acts taken by a president, who once again has put his personal political interest above the nation’s security.
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Trump Checks all of the Impeachment Boxes: Will it Matter?
Donald J. Fraser
Unlike other presidents, Trump’s actions meet each of the requirements that the Framer’s laid out to impeach a president. Ironically, just as impeachment is needed most, the partisan tenor of the times may make it impossible to accomplish.
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Annual Jewish Film Festival, Following New Wave of Anti-Semitism, Offers Hope and Inspiration
Bruce Chadwick
Given the attacks on Jews all over the country, the Jewish Film Festival, one of the oldest in the United States, could not have come at a better time
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Painter of Disquiet: Félix Vallotton at the Metropolitan Museum of Art'
Sam Ben-Meir
Vallotton’s work unquestionably merits the renewed attention — his paintings possess a mysterious quality, narrative appeal, and attention to detail, as well as invoke a delicious sense of irony and wit.
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Depression Era Tenor Hits All the High Notes
Bruce Chadwick
It is 1934, at the height of the Depression, and an opera company in Cleveland is trying to make enough money to stay in business.
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Can America Recapture Its Signature Exuberance?
Tracy Dahlby
Walt Whitman understood transcendence of national mood is an uphill climb. Periods of division and strife sort new realities into a renovated sense of purpose. Yet periods of upheaval must necessarily lead to a refitting, not obliteration, of our common story or democracy is toast.
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Cinema Paradiso: The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures Will Be The Home of Movies, Past and Present
Andrew Fletcher
When it opens in 2020, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures will be an interesting landmark for historians and movie buffs alike.
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Why The West Is Losing The Fight For Democracy
Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes
We once had trouble imagining a future that is not essentially democratic and capitalist. That is not the way we think today. Most of us now have trouble imagining a future, even in the West, that remains securely democratic and liberal.
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The History of Fire: An interview with Stephen Pyne
Matthew Crawford
"Fire is a creation of the living world, but we have defined it as a phenomenon for physics and chemistry...we’ve mostly ignored the ideas and institutions that shape the social half of the equation."
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A New History of American Liberalism
Bruce W. Dearstyne
Liberals looking for an enlightening but sobering account of their movement's history should read James Traub.
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