The Latest 
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Despite What You Hear, Most Americans Look Favorably on Internationalism
Lawrence Wittner
Most Americans recognize the lessons of worldwide crises in climate, migration and health: a system of nearly 200 nations guarding their own interests is not going to solve humanity's biggest problems.
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For 2022, the Democrats Don't Have an Alternative to Embracing Left Populist Energy
Wallace Hettle
The political field is tilted against the Democrats for the midterms and 2024; will the party embrace the energy of progressives and mobilize its voters the way that conservatives are successfully doing on the other side?
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Adulation for Today's Space Race is Misplaced. So is Nostalgia for the First One
Catherine Devlin
It is impossible not to compare today’s billionaire space race to the iconic celestial competition of the 1960’s. But what if neither is worthy of adulation?
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The Accident that Almost Decapitated the US Government
Stan Haynes
John Tyler intended to show off the firepower of the USS Princeton to boost his abysmal popularity and scare foreign goverments into letting him annex Texas. He nearly got more than he bargained for in one of the biggest close calls of presidential history.
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Blog
The 1950s Dog Dads Responsible for Voter Fraud Claims Today
Skipped History with Ben Tumin
A history of the Olin and Bradley Foundations
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Perlstein's "Reaganland" Sheds New Light on a Familiar Story
Ron Steinman
Rick Perlstein's "Reaganland" captures details of the 1980 campaign that weren't obvious even to political journalists covering Reagan's ultimately successful mission to take the conservative movement to the White House.
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HNN Will Be On Thanksgiving Break This Week
HNN will be off Thanksgiving Week. We will return with news aggregation on November 29, and publish new op-eds on December 5. We wish all of our readers a safe, restful, and happy holiday.
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The Roundup Top Ten for November 19, 2021
The top opinion writing by historians and about history from around the web this week.
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Kyle Rittenhouse's Trial Will End in a Verdict. The Nation's Trial By Ordeal Won't
Thomas Lecaque
"A trial by ordeal was not about miracles or superstition. It was, in effect, about the community making a decision on the innocence or guilt of the party, and then bringing it about." Kyle Rittenhouse's trial prompts an uncomfortable reckoning with the continuity of some medieval practices of justice.
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Fashion and Freedom from Suffrage to AOC
Einav Rabinovitch-Fox
Fashion, freedom, and American independence have been and are still connected to ideas of women’s rights and equality.
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Will SCOTUS Force Us All to Find Out How Polite an Armed Society Will Be?
Jim Zirin
The Supreme Court's oral arguments in a challenge to New York State's gun laws suggest the court is willing to defy precedent and history and assume a power that the Constitution reserves to the people and states, forcing all communities to accept the concealed carrying of firearms.
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Look to Lincoln's Interactions with Black Americans to Understand His Racial Attitudes
Michael Burlingame
As Lincoln's personal racial views have come under scrutiny, a biographer says that the prominent and ordinary Black Americans the 16th president dealth with didn't have the doubts today's activists do about where Lincoln stood.
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Blog
Professor, Novelist, and MacArthur "Genius" Charles Johnson on His First Career: Cartoonist
Robin Lindley
“To me, if you can create beauty as a gift to others, what more do you want? No riches can surpass that gift.”
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What "Forget the Alamo" Forgets
James W. Russell
"Forget the Alamo" is ultimately constrained by American unwillingness to fully deal with the reality that the US forcibly stole Texas and the southwest from Mexico.
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The Roundup Top Ten for November 12, 2021
The top opinion writing by historians and about history from around the web this week.
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The Black Women Veterans of World War II Fought for More than the "Double V"
Kaia Alderson
Kaia Alderson's new historical novel "Sisters in Arms" tells the story of the Black women in the World War II military whose service combined fights against fascism, racism and sexism.
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Remember the Army's Role in the Pacific War: Important Then, Influential Afterward
John C. McManus
During the second World War and after, the Marine Corps has received admiration and attention for its role in the Pacific, but the Army carried out a huge number of invasions and performed the logistics other services depended on. The Army's experiences in WWII also were foundational, for good and ill, for the next half-century of American war.
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Historically, Black Distrust of Police is About More than Acts of Violence
Christopher Hayes
The Harlem rebellion against the NYPD in July 1964 was sparked by a police killing of a teenager (and a grand jury's refusal to indict him), but reflected the role of the police in maintaining a profoundly unequal social order that affected everyday life in Black neighborhoods, a situation that has changed little.
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Citizen's Arrest Law at Center of Trial of Arbery's Killers Originated in Slavery
Alan J. Singer
The three men on trial for killing Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia are counting on a jury to accept their claim that they were executing a citizen's arrest on Arbery. Georgia's citizen's arrest law, since repealed, shares in the racist history of similar laws across the nation.
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Writing a Classic: Richard Tregaskis and "Guadalcanal Diary"
Ray E. Boomhower
Combat reporter Richard Tregaskis's account of the August 1942 Marine invasion of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands passed military censors and became a popular sensation while offering the public an account of the difficulty and brutality of the Pacific war.
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Blog
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Tom Standage on his Brief History of Motion
James Thornton Harris
Author Tom Standage discusses his history of personal transportation, the future of private automobile ownership, and the power of technology as a driver of history.
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The Roundup Top Ten for November 5, 2021
The top opinion writing by historians and about history from around the web this week.
News
- We All Live in the John Birch Society's World Now
- US-Based Brazilian Historians Write Open Letter Protesting Bolsonaro's National Archivist Appointment
- Deborah Lipstadt Appointment to Global Antisemitism Monitor Blocked by Partisan Obstructionism
- Joanne Freeman: Violent Rhetoric in Congress is Meant to Intimidate Enemies Into Silence
- Isaac Chotiner Interviews Martin Indyk about Henry Kissinger
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