America, Palestine, and UNRWA: A History of Self-interest
By Laura Robson
The Latest 
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Blog
The Weakness of Democracy
Steve Hochstadt
When we extend our gaze beyond the US, we can more easily perceive that democracy often works badly.
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A Heartwarming Lost Chapter on Immigrants Emerges
Bruce Chadwick
Playwright Harelik does not just tell his grandfather’s personal story in The Immigrant; he tells the story, in one way or another of all immigrants.
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What Does William Barr Have to Do With Iran Contra?
Jeffrey J. Matthews
And what it means for George H.W. Bush's legacy.
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Is Shoeless Joe Jackson Innocent? The Black Sox Scandal 100 Years Later
Granville Wyche Burgess
As another baseball season begins, the history of baseball's biggest scandal and how its legacy legacy still shapes the sport today.
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An American Socialite and the Biggest British Constitutional Crisis Since Henry VIII's Divorce
Anna Pasternak
Wallis Simpson has become a caricature of villainous womanhood. This Women’s History Month, let's revisit and uncover her real history.
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The Elon Musk of Global Crime and European Colonialism in Africa
Elaine Shannon
Paul LeRoux has to be seen in the context of the history of southern Africa, a rapacious, swash-buckling profiteer trading in guns, drugs, gold, timber, false documents and human life.
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A House Once More Divided
Georgiann Baldino
Lincoln understood that involved citizens preserve the union, and he taught a vital lesson that only when human rights are respected is democracy worth preserving.
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What I’m Reading: An Interview With Environmental Historian Eleonora Rohland
Erik Moshe
“History as a discipline needs to renew itself, needs to reassert or renegotiate its place in society, needs to be vocal on political abuses of terminology or populist and racist reinterpretations of historical events.”
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Political Leadership and the Need for a New American Story
Walter G. Moss
Both Lincoln and FDR understood that to reach people, to motivate them, to win them over, a president had to appeal to their emotions, and storytelling was one way of doing so.
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Vernon Johns: An Often Forgotten Controversial Civil Rights Activist
M. Andrew Holowchak
Johns was a critical figure in the push for racial equality, chiefly because he was not merely a pusher, but also a shover.
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What Democratic Socialism Is and Is Not
Lawrence Wittner
Of course, democratic socialism might not be what you want. But let’s not pretend that it’s something that it’s not.
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Trump's Executive Order Censors Free Speech on College Campuses
Ed Simon
The House Un-American Activities Committee and the real intent of Trump's "free speech" executive order.
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Blog
What is Antisemitism?
Steve Hochstadt
Many, perhaps most accusations of antisemitism are made in good faith for the purpose of calling attention to real religious prejudice. B...
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Blog
Mike Pence Says the US Has Been "A Force For Good in the Middle East" for "nearly 200 years"; Here's How Historians Responded
Checkered History
Eight Middle East historians contribute to a history check on the vice president's claim of 200 years of American goodness.
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Roundup Top 10!
This week's broad sampling of opinion pieces found on the Internet, as selected by the editors of HNN.
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Andy Warhol: A Lot More than Soup Cans
Bruce Chadwick
A review of the Whitney Musem's exhibit Andy Warhol – From A to B and Back Again and a reflection on the artist.
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Richmond’s Robert E. Lee Statue: A Southern Unionist’s Viewpoint
Elizabeth Varon
Elizabeth Van Lew was a Southerner who supported the Union. She--and other Southern Unionists--deepen our understanding of the Civil War and its legacies.
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Parents, College, Money, and the American Dream
Janet Golden
At a time when less than 20 percent of Americans completed high school and far fewer went on to higher education, financial institutions told parents to start saving for college.
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The Antigay "Traditional Plan" and the History of the Methodist Church
Christopher M. Bishop
Until this month, slavery was the only other issue that seriously threatened the unity of American Methodism.
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The Death of Appeasement: the 80th Anniversary of the Invasion of Prague
Yoav J. Tenembaum
March 1939 was the real turning point in international relations. September 1939 was to be the climax.
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Why is the Mona Lisa not the Mona Lisa?
Jean-Pierre Isbouts and Christopher Brown
New research suggests the famous painting in the Louvre does not depict Mona Lisa.
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London at War, 1941, and a New Alice in Wonderland
Bruce Chadwick
Can you really spend a better evening than chasing a white rabbit trotting through the forest with a pocket watch in his hand? A review of Alice By Heart.
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Why the U.S. Bombed Auschwitz, But Didn't Save the Jews
Rafael Medoff
Seventy-five years ago this week—on March 19, 1944—German troops marched into Hungary. The country’s 800,000 Jews, the last major Jewish community to have eluded the raging Holocaust, now lay within Hitler’s grasp.
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History Will Clash With History in the 2020 Election
Ronald L. Feinman
Three different historical precedents all suggest a different outcome in 2020.
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Blog
The History of International Women’s Day and the Ongoing Fight for Gender Equality
Steve Hochstadt
International Women’s Day serves to highlight the remaining gender inequality in our society.
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Roundup Top 10!
This week's broad sampling of opinion pieces found on the Internet, as selected by the editors of HNN.
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Blog
Mennonite Values
Jim Loewen
"At the end of my life, I publish these lines thinking that they may come to be meaningful to you."
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What Historians Are Saying About the College Admissions Scandal
Historians respond to Operation Varsity Blues.
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The Most Alarming Argument in Jill Lepore's These Truths
Walter G. Moss
How technology has destablized our world and why there's still hope.
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What I’m Reading: An Interview With Civil War Historian Anne Sarah Rubin
Erik Moshe
“To hold your own book is to have achieved something permanent in an ephemeral world.”
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Hitler's Own Maginot Line
Robert Scott Kellner
What the diary of a German against the Third Reich can teach us about the Atlantic Wall.
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Lessons from Studying Corporate History and the Case of IBM
James W. Cortada
And what it can teach us about the longevity of corporations.
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Robinson Crusoe’s Wall
Geoffrey Sill
We can look to history, especially literary and cultural history, to explain the passionate desire of many Americans to build a wall.
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How the Allies Won on D-Day
Giles Milton
A ground-breaking account of the first 24 hours of the D-Day invasion told by a symphony of incredible accounts of unknown and unheralded members of the Allied – and Axis – forces.
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Three Unexpected Deaths That Shaped Presidential History
Ronald L. Feinman
Unexpected tragedy in the lives of three political leaders—John F. Kennedy, Jr., Paul Wellstone, and Joe Biden—demonstrate the profound impact of chance on political history.
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A Historian Reflects on a Long Life
Vaughn Davis Bornet
In this personal essay, historian Vaughn Davis Bornet offers his advice on living a long life.
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What Historians Are Tweeting: The Women Historians Who Inspire on International Women's Day
Dr. Sarah Bond (@SarahEBond) asked "How did your female mentor make a difference in your career?" Here are some of the responses.
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Blog
Can Artists Remake Society?
Steve Hochstadt
One of the most striking changes triggered by the November Revolution in Germany, and more generally the revolutions in eastern Europe provoked by the Russian Revolution, was the conquest of the ar...
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Writer Amiri Baraka and the Endless Controversies
Bruce Chadwick
A review of Looking for LeRoy, a play about one of the most controversial playwrights and poets in American history
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Roundup Top 10!
This week's broad sampling of opinion pieces found on the Internet, as selected by the editors of HNN.
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The English Diggers, the "Commons," and the Green New Deal
Ed Simon
The idea of the “commons” as a space of collective ownership, responsibility, engagement, and possibility must be a metaphor that the left draws from rhetorically.
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Genocide Denial In Bosnia: A Danger to Europe and to the World
Albinko Hasic
The same de-humanizing philosophy which fed into ethnic and religious tropes leading to genocide is back, perhaps stronger than ever.
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The Entangled History of “America First” and “The American Dream"
James Thornton Harris
Sarah Churchwell unravels the complicated history behind “America First” in her new book Behold America.
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What I’m Reading: An Interview With Public Historian Amanda Higgins
Erik Moshe
“The best historians are removing the layer between the finished thing and the work to get to that finished project.”
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Will the U.S. Government Abide by the International Law It Created in Venezuela?
Lawrence Wittner
And how the U.S. government has violated these principles of international law in the past.
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Remembering Audrey Hepburn's Best Role
William Lambers
How her experiences as a child motivated her commitment to ending children's hunger.
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Is Bernie Sanders Actually A Democratic Socialist?
Michael Sheng
"For the sake of history, please tell your voters what you really believe, and don’t just throw out a label without a precise definition."
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Battlefield Tourism At Ypres and How Public History Sites Change
Mark Connelly and Stefan Goebel
Modern Ypres or Ieper is a world forged and shaped in the furnace of a conflict that ended one hundred years ago this November.
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What FDR Can Teach Us About Congress and National Emergencies
Martin Halpern
Seventy-five years ago this week, there was a serious conflict between President Franklin Roosevelt and Congress.
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Roundup Top 10!
This week's broad sampling of opinion pieces found on the Internet, as selected by the editors of HNN.
News
- How the Little Ice Age Changed History
- Trump Administration to Turn Over Trove of Declassified Records to Argentina on Human Rights Violations Committed During Military Dictatorship
- To Understand The History Of Elite College Admissions, Just Follow The Money
- A Brief History of the Golan Heights, Claimed by Israel and Syria
- The warped history that fuels right-wing terrorism
- Justin Rose's New Book explores how Martin Luther King Jr. transformed the Christian notion of service into a politically salient concept
- Margaret MacMillan, History Professor Emeritus at Oxford University, Gives Warnings from history for Brexit Britain
- The Historian Who Thinks Donald Trump Is a Movie Hero
- In Memoriam: Joe Miller, Ground-Breaking Historian
- The Women Highlighting Women's History in Feminist Travel Guides
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