Historians in the News

This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in each source note. Quotation marks are not used.

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• 
• SOURCE: Chris Riback's Conversations
  10/31/19
  

  Chris Riback is Reading the Impeachment Inquiry Opening Statements Aloud on His Podcast

  by Chris Riback

  An easy way to listen to and understand history-making testimony as it happens. 

• 
• SOURCE: Chris Riback's Conversations
  10/18/19
  

  Julie Hirschfeld Davis & Michael D. Shear: Inside Trump’s Assault on Immigration

  by Chris Riback

  But it turns out, the immigration story — the historical American experience and the current realities — serves as an incredibly useful way to consider the entire Trump presidency: Obsession, chaos, fear, depravity, and yet – meaningful, important, and potentially-lasting change that has shifted not only how the world views America, but how we view ourselves.

• 
• 11/7/19
  

  14 Ships' Figureheads Weighing Over 20 Tons Arrive at UK's Newest Museum, The Box

  by Orbis Conservation

  In what is the most ambitious sculpture conservation project currently taking place in the UK, 14 monumental 19th century naval figureheads have been saved from decay for the nation. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  11/7/19
  

  Historian Hope Harrison Interviewed for article on German Reunification in The Atlantic

  The article, "What Would It Take to Unify Korea? Germany Offers Lessons, examines all that is still left to do to reunify Germany 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. 

• 
• SOURCE: Nursing Clio
  11/6/19
  

  “If you liked this interview, you’ll love this book”: A Review of Sarah Milov’s The Cigarette: A Political History (2019)

  by Jaipreet Virdi

  "The history of the cigarette does not begin and end with Big Tobacco."

• 
• SOURCE: VOA
  11/4/19
  

  No End in Sight for Jailed Gulag Historian Yury Dmitriyev

  His decades-long research to expose the scale of the late Communist leader’s terror have met with mounting criticism under Russian President Vladimir Putin and landed him in jail in the Karelian capital of Petrozavodsk in northwest Russia.

• 
• SOURCE: Slate
  10/31/19
  

  Historians Manisha Sinha, Kate Clifford Larson, and Milton Sernett Interviewed for Article on Historical Accuracy of Harriet Film

  "What’s Fact and What’s Fiction in Harriet"

• 
• SOURCE: The Guardian
  11/5/19
  

  Teens are making historical events go viral on TikTok

  The most powerful videos use human beings to personify world actors – such as countries – in major historical events.

• 
• SOURCE: The Times of Israel
  11/4/19
  

  Rafael Medoff's New Book Suggests new evidence shows FDR’s bigotry derailed many Holocaust rescue plans

  In his book about Franklin Roosevelt and the Holocaust, Rafael Medoff finds links between the US president’s anti-Japanese stances and his policies against Jews fleeing Hitler.

• 
• SOURCE: Facing South
  Accessed 11/5/19
  

  How Confederate propaganda ended up in the South's schoolbooks

  The poisonous Lost Cause lessons were taught to multiple generations of Southerners to uphold institutionalized white supremacy — in part through public school curriculums shaped by the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC). 

• 
• SOURCE: The New York Times
  10/31/19
  

  Two Histories of Financiers Profiting From Real Estate While Homeowners Go Belly Up

  by Jennifer Szalai

  “Homewreckers,” by Aaron Glantz and “Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership,” by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor show what happens when private speculators get buoyed by government largess while non-tycoons are largely left to fend for themselves.

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  November 1, 2019
  

  Alan Taylor's Book Reviewed in the Washington Post: Thomas Jefferson’s Education

  by Drew Faust

  How slavery warped Jefferson’s vision for the University of Virginia.

• 
• SOURCE: Atlas Obscura
  10/31/19
  

  A Cultural Historian Explores an Old Mental Hospital and Why They Scare Us

  by Troy Rondinone

  They are haunted, but not by ghosts. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Review of Books
  11/7/19
  

  "First: Sandra Day O'Connor" biography released

  by Evan Thomas

  Those of a certain age, particularly women, know where they were when they heard that the president was naming a woman to the Supreme Court.

• 
• SOURCE: The New York Times
  October 29, 2019
  

  The Famous, Feuding Siblings Who Helped Shape Modern China

  by Jiayang Fan

  Jung Chang within “Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister: Three Women at the Heart of Twentieth-Century China” lays out the history of the Soong sisters and how they helped formed the modem Chinese Communist Party.

• 
• SOURCE: The Guardian
  November 3, 2019
  

  Historian Erica Armstrong Dunbar interviewed by The Guardian about her new biography of Harriet Tubman

  by Amanda Holpuch

  Author Erica Armstrong Dunbar explains how the abolitionist may be one of the best-known women in US history – but years of her life are usually ‘erased’

• 
• SOURCE: The New York Times
  November 1, 2019
  

  The Evil Repercussions of the American Revolution

  A review of Matthew Lockwood's book "To begin the world all over again: how the American Revolution devestated the globe". 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  11/1/19
  

  The Bones of A Former Slave And Black Leader Were Missing — Until A Historian Asked In The Right Place

  Historian Janice Hayes-Williams was just starting out as an amateur local historian when she found out Smith Price had been deeply disrespected.

• 
• SOURCE: Nursing Clio
  10/31/19
  

  How Talk Radio Transformed American Politics

  by Lara Freidenfelds

  A review of Brian Rosenwald’s Talk Radio’s America: How an Industry Took Over a Political Party That Took Over the United States.

• 
• SOURCE: The Guardian
  10/30/19
  

  UK's first black female history professor to research Bristol's slavery links

  Olivette Otele says she wants to ‘facilitate dialogue that needs to take place’ at University of Bristol.