Remembering Altamont, the Day the Sixties Died
By James Thornton Harris
The Latest 
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After the Bleeding Stopped
D. M. Giangreco
While many features on Altamont’s 50th anniversary will focus on the violence, I’ll always remember what happened after the bleeding stopped: the chaos of broken promises and what the willing volunteers--- unsupported and unknown --- ultimately accomplished there.
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A Wealth Tax? Two Framers Weigh In
Ray Raphael
Wealth taxes are on the current political table and hotly debated. All taxation was on the framers’ table as they considered a new constitution. What would they make of the measures we are considering now?
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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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How did November become the Mizrahi Heritage Month? And what’s Mizrahi anyhow?
Lior Sternfeld and Arie M. Dubnov
The Mizrahi heritage month is not a local, grassroots initiative that emerged in response to experiences of discrimination or marginalization. Instead, it is a transatlantic importation of recent attempts by the Israeli government to commemorate the forced expulsion of Jews from the Arab and Muslim world in the wake of the establishment of Israel.
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William Barr’s Upside-Down Constitution
Robert J. Spitzer
The Trump administration’s many questionable actions have raised both new and old concerns about the extent and reach of executive power.
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Impeachment Has Always Been a Purely Political Process
Waller R. Newell
One of the Constitution’s fundamental aims, according to Alexander Hamilton, was to forestall the emergence an American tyrant — a “Catiline or Caesar.”
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Neville Chamberlain, Sir Horace Wilson, & Britain's Plight of Appeasement
Adrian Phillips
The history of appeasement is intertwined with the history of Churchill.
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How Tony Kushner’s A Bright Room Called Day Can Help Us Understand Our Political Moment
Frank Palmeri
Tony Kushner’s A Bright Room Called Day is a rare bird—a revival (with a substantial re-write) that proves to be more timely and incisive than the original was.
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A Review of Amazon Prime’s Series Dostoevsky
Walter G. Moss
Americans unfamiliar with Dostoevsky's life, and perhaps even with some of his greatest works like Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, can now get to know him via Amazon Prime’s 8-part subtitled series Dostoevsky, directed by the Russian Vladimir Khotinenko.
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Losing Sight of Jefferson and Falling into Plato
M. Andrew Holowchak
Socratic Styled Teaching in Twenty-First Century American Classrooms
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The Myth of the First Thanksgiving is a Buttress of White Nationalism and Needs to Go
David J. Silverman
Americans tend to view the Thanksgiving myth as harmless, but it is loaded with fraught ideological meaning.
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Bodhisattvas and Saints
Ed Simon
St. Josaphat is a particularly remarkable Roman Catholic saint, for he’s normally known by a rather different title – the Buddha.
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Blog
Curing Ourselves with Fred Rogers
Steve Hochstadt
Instead of stressing about Trump’s latest idiocy or the decline of American politics, about which we can do very little, we could try to emulate Mr. Rogers. We could see the world as an oppor...
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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 History Behind the Rocket Used in the Latest Attack Against Israel
Gideon Remez
Israel wielded a similar "mega-rocket" against Egypt 50 years ago. How Soviet advisers dealt with it.
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Legalize Torture? It’s Tortured Logic
Sam Ben-Meir
The Report is largely about another single-minded individual, Daniel J. Jones (Adam Driver), lead investigator of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who spent five arduous years doggedly uncovering the CIA’s suspect detention and interrogation program following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
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Cinderella, Whose History Goes Back to the First Century, Is Still a Delight, Glass Slippers and All
Bruce Chadwick
The tale seemed to have first appeared in Egypt around 100 A.D. That story featured a lost Greek girl who stumbled into a party hosted by the Pharaoh.
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We Cannot Forget About Acid Rain
Sam Mastrianni
Acid rain was a major problem in the late twentieth century. Through years of regulation and reform, the threat from this acid was neutralized. If we don’t learn from history though, we could face the same terrible threat yet again.
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Trump's Official Withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement Mirrors George W. Bush's Exit from Kyoto Protocol
Mark Detlor
The United States has a long history of being hesitent to match other western nation's commitment to the climate.
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Historians criticize Trump after he calls impeachment inquiry a ‘lynching’
Laura Gonzalez
President Trump's tweet drew backlash from historians against the use of a racially charged word.
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The History Briefing on "Quid Pro Quo:" The Evolution and History of Quid Pro Quo
Samantha Benthien
How can the history of the term quid pro quo inform our understanding of its current use in the impeachment inquiry against the President?
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Democrats Should Welcome Michael Bloomberg Into the Primary Race
Robert Brent Toplin
He could be a promising alternative if Trump looks competitive in 2020.
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Investigating Technology and the Remaking of America
Robin Lindley
A conversation with Acclaimed History Professor Margaret O’Mara on Her Career and Her Groundbreaking New Book on Silicon Valley
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The History of Black Incarceration Is Longer Than You May Think
Jeff Forret
The incarceration of African Americans did not begin suddenly with the end of the Civil War. Confinement functioned as a punishment during bondage as well.
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A Marvelous Christmas Carol
Bruce Chadwick
This new A Christmas Carol, based on Charles Dickens’ novel, has a different look to it, a different musical score, a different Scrooge and different ghosts. But it is the same heart-warming story.
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Fake News and the Founders: Get Used to It!
Harlow Giles Unger
Fake news did not diminish as the nation matured. Indeed, it became entwined in the nation’s literary fabric.
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Russian Victories in the Post-Cold War Era
Albert M. Camarillo
Putin’s Russia is winning battles to destabilize the U.S. that former USSR leaders such as Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, and Leonid Brezhnev had tried but failed.
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Overcoming Cold War Narratives: Remembering the Progressive Politics of Louis Adamic
John P. Enyeart
The reemergence of progressive politics today, and its links to antifascism, has a long history.
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Trump Skips ASEAN Summit, Continuing a Presidential Tradition
Ang Cheng Guan
President Trump’s decision to skip the ASEAN meetings in Southeast Asia this month must feel like déjà vu to the leaders in the region.
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Lincoln – not Pilgrims – responsible for Thanksgiving holiday
William C. Kashatus
Since 1863, Thanksgiving has been observed annually in the United States.
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American Exceptionalism and Why We Must Impeach Trump
Greg Bailey
The weight of our heritage and the promise of our future demand that we act in the present to restore our exceptional place in the world and in our hearts.
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“You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war”
Ken Lawrence
Did William Randolph Hearst actually send a 1897 telegram to Frederic Remington with this directive?
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The Mysterious Assassination That Unleashed Jihadism
Thomas Hegghammer
The story of Abdallah Azzam suggests that a root cause of modern jihadism was the collapse in respect for religious authority among young Islamists in the late 1980s.
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The Best Work in History Illuminates Life Now: An Interview with Angela Woollacott
Erik Moshe
Historians must actively participate in the arenas of public discourse, to promote the vital role of our discipline in civic society.
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Going blue in the Bluegrass State? History echoes in Kentucky’s gubernatorial results
Billy J. Stratton
Not all that long ago, Eastern Kentucky was a Democratic stronghold.
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Coexistence and Sectarianism in the Modern Arab World
Ussama Makdisi
In the case of the Middle East, the need to demythologize communities and their ideological underpinnings needs to go hand in hand with evoking a dynamic history of coexistence that transcends communalism.
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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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Sondland Sings: Here's How Historians Are Responding
What historians are saying, tweeting and retweeting.
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Too Important or Too Irrelevant? Why Beijing Hesitates on Hong Kong
Kevin M. Shanley
Two competing narratives possibly explain why Beijing’s authoritarian communist rulers have not so far interfered in the increasingly violent protests in Hong Kong, now six months old and heading into a deadly new phase.
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England’s Richard III as Murderous, Royal Thug
Bruce Chadwick
William Shakespeare’s bone-chilling play Richard III portrays England’s deformed monarch as a murderous thug, one of the great villains of world history.
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Blog
What Have the Latest Impeachment Hearings Revealed?
Steve Hochstadt
Steve Hochstadt recaps the last week of hearings.
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The Runway for Global Warming: The Suez Canal's 150th Anniversary
On Barak
The largest infrastructural project of the nineteenth century annexed the Middle East into the fossil-fuels complex. Reexamining its history is indispensable for decarbonization today.
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The Whistleblowers of the My Lai Massacre
Howard Jones
Evidence—and history—ultimately showed that an Army cover-up took place after the massacre. We know about it because of a single whistleblower and his two crewmates.
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The Princess and the Press
Georgie Blalock
The more details people craved about the Princess, the more the press found ways to provide them, revealing both the good and bad about Princess Margaret's life and fame.
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Benjamin Franklin, Religious Revolutionary
J.D. Dickey
Surprisingly, however, during America’s first major evangelical revival — the Great Awakening of the 1730s and ’40s — one of its most important figures had little use for religious conservatism. In fact, he wasn’t a preacher at all, but the reform-minded, freethinking Philadelphia printer Benjamin Franklin.
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Robert E. Lee Wasn't a Hero, He Was a Traitor
Michael McLean
Lee was no hero. He was neither noble nor wise. Lee was a traitor who killed United States soldiers, fought for human enslavement, vastly increased the bloodshed of the Civil War, and made embarrassing tactical mistakes.
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The History of Personal Hygiene: An Interview with Peter Ward
Aleisha Smith
"The history of the unremarkable and the ordinary have an importance of their own, one that can easily surpass the history of greatness in any of its many forms."
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The Used Bookstore Find that Inspired A History of Dress and Fashion
Erik Moshe
Linda Przybyszewski on her work as a historian--including her history of women's fashion and dressmaking.
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Which Would You Prefer―Nuclear War or Climate Catastrophe?
Lawrence Wittner
A satirical examination of the threats facing the world.
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The 7 Wonders of the World – Digitally Reconstructed
John Cole
A team of researchers and 3D artists over at Budget Direct have worked with the existing sources we have for the missing wonders, and created digital reconstructions of how they would have looked like.
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The History Briefing on the 30th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall
Andrew Fletcher
The collaspe of the Berlin Wall had both historical as well as cultural significance, which we should remember on its anniversary.
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The History Briefing on Whistleblowers: Historical Perspective on the Ukraine Scandal
Julia Brown
From Snowden to Deep Throat, whistleblowers have continually altered the course of American history and policy.
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The History Briefing on California Wildfires and Climate Change: How Historians Contextualized the News
Matthew Crawford
Historians give much-needed context on the recent California wildfires and climate change.
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Cracked Foundations: The Case for Reparations
Julia Brown
Compensation for historically disadvantaged minorities is nothing new.
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The Impeachment Primer: 40+ Articles About Impeachment by Historians
A detailed list of articles authored by historians that contextualize major themes in the ongiong impeachment inquiry.
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Sondland Sings: Here's How Historians Are Responding
What historians are saying, tweeting and retweeting.
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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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Why Televised Hearings Mattered During Watergate But May Not Today
James Robenalt
The whistleblower today has been backed up by others who had direct knowledge, making his or her account now superfluous. John Dean had no such back-up from others; he had to wait a year for his testimony to be fully corroborated by the tapes themselves.
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Muslims Should Reject Indian Supreme Court's Land Offer
B. Z. Khasru
In a mockery of justice, India's top court gives orthodox Hindus a way to avenge their humiliation under Muslim rule for a thousand years.
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The Whistleblower Should Remain Anonymous
Greg Bailey
The administration is trying to expose the identity of the whistleblower, an act as unnecessary as it is illegal. It would destroy the whistleblower’s life as intentionally as Frank Wills’ life was destroyed carelessly.
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The Battle of Midway Movie is Mostly Terrific
Bruce Chadwick
Despite its drawbacks, Midway is a rip-roaring military saga and a testament to the men who won it.
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The Brave Jewish D’Artagnan Who Fenced for Germany in the 1936 Olympics
Bruce Chadwick
One of the reasons Games resonates today is that ever since those long-ago Olympics in 1936 Jews have faced constant discrimination and persecution, unfairly so, and face it today, too.
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- 'Human, vulnerable and perfect': New Rosa Parks exhibit shines light on civil rights legend
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- Mary Thompson Featured in Article on George Washington's Dog Breeding
- China Releases History Professor, But Travel Concerns Persist
- Gordon Wood Interviewed on the New York Times’ 1619 Project
- Books by Garret Martin, Balazs Martonffy, Ronald Suny, and Kelly McFarland Featured in Article on NATO at 50
- The secret history of women in America, told through their belongings
- Irish Archive Recreates Documents Lost in in 1922 fire
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