The Latest 
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Minor Temporary Changes to HNN's Schedule
HNN's editor is taking some time off between July 9 and 14. New op ed essays will be posted as usual on Sunday.
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Blog
A Renaming Everyone Can Get Behind
Jim Loewen
Delaware is the only U.S. state without a name for its highest point. Naming it after Ronald Reagan would probably satisfy fans and critics alike.
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Blog
We’re All Historians Now
Stone Age Brain
Donald Trump may not like the debate we are having about history. I welcome it.
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This Independence Day, We Need a Patriotism Index
Gregory D. Foster
We must now develop a long-overdue Patriotism Index to quantitatively distinguish real Americans from the many poseurs and potential enemies who lurk among us.
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This Independence Day, Celebrate and Carry On America's Past Generosity
William Lambers
As we celebrate America’s birthday on July 4th, let’s remember how our nation’s generosity has aided many hungry and oppressed people around the world.
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Madison’s Sorrow Goes Beyond Pompeo's Dinners
Kevin C. O'Leary
We are stuck with two major parties and when one party abandons the broad liberal-conservative center, the system stops working.
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The Case for a National Liberation Day Holiday on December 6
Robert Hardaway
The anniversary of the ratification of the 13th Amendment, which finally eliminated slavery in the entire United States, should be made a national holiday.
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Abolition Movement Historian Ethan Kytle Discusses Confederate Monuments and Teaching Younger Students about Slavery
James Thornton Harris
"I don’t think it is fair for a scholar like me to tell a community what sort of monuments it should put up. This should be a local decision—and one that takes into account the perspectives of the entire community, which was not the case with Confederate monuments."
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New Novel "The Collaborator" Explores the Moral Ambiguities of a Holocaust Rescuer
Diane Armstrong
Do we have the right to judge the actions of people in life and death situations? Are we honour-bound to keep promises, no matter to whom they were made, and in what situations? Can a man be a hero and a collaborator?
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While Monuments are Being Removed, a Historian Asks Questions
Andrew Joseph Pegoda
People have a right to walk around their neighborhood park without being terrorized by iconography devoted to people who denied their ancestors human rights.
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But Why Is America Exceptional?
Guy Chet
Political separation from Britain allowed old English traits to remain preserved in America, like a bug in amber, even as they were whittled away by change in the old country.
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Annexation Will Be the (Formal) Beginning of Apartheid and the End of Zionism
Andrew Seth Meyer
An American historian and lifelong liberal Zionist concludes that Israel's planned annexation of West Bank territory will force people of conscience to choose between liberal ideals and a form of Zionism harnessed to ethnic nationalism.
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How Britain and Churchill Repelled the Nazi War Machine (1940-1941)
Jeff Roquen
In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson has not only produced an engaging and timely portrait of the perilous period of when Britain stood alone against Nazi Germany but has also illuminated how tragedy and loss can be turned into a triumph and justice through steadfast determination and solidarity of purpose.
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Of Steamboats and Fireworks: The Great Mississippi River Race of 1870
Eric Simanek
On the 4th of July of 1870, a 1,200 mile race between two steamboats on the Mississippi River was decided. The race attracted global interest. Reporters wrote about it. Gamblers wagered on it. People gathered and cheered for it.
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Will Capitalist Consumer Culture Absorb Another Generation of Protest?
Walter G. Moss
Do recent protests against the symbols of racism--monuments and statues--reflect a political movement that can easily be absorbed by today's multicultural corporations, or will that energy sustain a push to fundamentally reform American capitalism too?
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Blog
The Youngest History-Makers in the U.S. Senate
Ronald L. Feinman
Although he seeks to become the oldest first-term president in US history, Joe Biden began his career in national office at the youngest age allowed for a US Senator.
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Ken Burns: Our Monuments are Representations of Myth, Not Fact
James Baldwin reflects on the complexity of "liberty" in the context of anti-black racism.
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The Roundup Top Ten for July 3, 2020
HNN Staff
The week's top op-eds by historians from around the web.
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The Slow Path to Police Reform in Northern Ireland
Donald M. Beaudette and Laura Weinstein
It took deep reforms and patience to build trust in policing across the sectarian divide of Northern Ireland after the Good Friday Accords. Does that process have lessons for the United States?
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Big Alex McKenzie and the Last Great Fraud of the Gilded Age
Paul Starobin
Alexander McKenzie’s plot to corner Alaska’s gold proved to be the last great swindle of the original gilded age, as this seamy chapter in our national life gave way to what become known as the Progressive Era.
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Liberal Reform Threatens to Expand the Police Power--Just as it did in the Past
Max Felker-Kantor
The history of liberal law-and-order reveals that procedural reforms implemented on top of a structure of policing that has been empowered to protect property and control “disorder” are not only doomed to fail but will produce the conditions for more protest and resistance.
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In the “Bramble” of Central Park, a Showdown Over Nature and Race
Douglas C. Sackman
The viral video of the confrontation between birder Christian Cooper and dog walker Amy Cooper in Central park illuminates how nature and race have been constructed in America, giving privileged access to some while turning others into eternal trespassers.
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Newest Born of Nations: European Nationalism and the Confederate States of America
Ann Tucker
White southerners looked to contemporary European nationalist movements and compared the South to aspiring nations abroad. This allowed them to conceive of the South as a potential nation, distinct from the North and separate from the United States, and to justify secession and the creation of the Confederacy.
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“A Very Different Story”: Marian Sims and Reconstruction
David B. Parker
Marian Sims's 1942 historical novel Beyond Surrender was not nearly as popular as Gone with the Wind. But it reminds us today of a history that might have been--both during Reconstruction and in the popular portrayal of the period.
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Those We Abuse, We Loathe
J. Chester Johnson
Until white Americans reckon with the significance of white supremacy in America, they will deflect a sense of responsibility by laying blame for black suffering on black Americans themselves.
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Pawns of History: The Poetics of Russian Revolutionary Politics
Tim Brinkhof
The repression of political dissent in Czarist Russia led many future revolutionaries to literature as a gateway to political thought; their poetic idealism may have made them both effective and dangerous.
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Will George Floyd’s Murder Be Trump’s Undoing?
James D. Zirin
Donald Trump seems to mistake the temper of the times. Will his instinct to divide the nation be his undoing?
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In This Election Year We Historians Need to Insist on Truth-telling
Walter G. Moss
“Tell the truth” should be as central to our mission, as “First, do no harm” is to doctors and nurses.
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Has Trump’s Popularity Reached a Tipping Point? Joe McCarthy's Fall May Give Clues
Robert Brent Toplin
McCarthy rode a wave of bullying and bluster until it broke back on him. Trump has advantages as president that McCarthy didn't, but faces the same problem: his tactics will work until they don't.
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Vannevar Bush: Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Indispensable Expert
Michael H. Ebner
Vannevar Bush's efforts to bring the expertise of scientists to bear on public policy decisions led to the establishment of the National Science Foundation under Harry Truman's presidency.
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Roundup Top Ten for June 26, 2020
The top ten op-eds by historians or about history from around the web this week.
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Ghosts of Neshoba: Why Trump Can't Dog Whistle His Way Back to the White House
Rick Perlstein
Ronald Reagan's notorious "states' rights" pledge in Mississippi in 1980 was actually damaging to his campaign. The Gipper needed all his political skill and actor's discipline to rebuild his standing with moderates while still appealing to resentful white voters. Donald Trump lacks the skill to pull off the same trick.
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The Great Upheaval of 1877 Sheds Light on Today’s Protests
Richard Schneirov
1877 saw a wave of mass protests and strikes by the urban poor of multiple ethnicities, violent repression by the forces of law and order, and a news media that focused on sensational instances of looting and property damage while ignoring the protesters' complaints about inequality during a brutal economic downturn.
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Witness Against the Beast
Christopher Tomlins
Nat Turner followed his evangelical faith to challenge a profane and degenerate slaveholding regime. Today's white evangelical Christians must decide whether to support the successor of that regime.
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After Those Cruel Wars Were Over: Lessons from Two Economic Recoveries
Hugh Rockoff and Mark Wilson
An economist and economic historian argue that a well-planned response to the economic disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic could result in economic recoveries like those that followed the two World Wars.
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Misremembering the Fall of France 80 Years Later (Part 2)
Robert J. Young
The French defeat was driven by strategic error and faulty battlefield strategy, but not by a lack of will to fight.
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Viral Consequences
David Marks
The indifferent response of the Trump administration to the COVID-19 pandemic and the repressive police response to protests are a signal that we need a political and social transformation to address the ongoing global climate crisis.
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The Twisted History of Domestic Military Intervention
Alan Singer
The use of federal troops to enforce domestic law and order has usually served the interests of big business and white supremacy; recent calls to send in the troops are not concerned with protecting freedom.
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Peace is Temporary Without Trustworthy Leaders: Lessons from the Philadelphia Mutiny
David Head
In an environment of intense mutual suspicion—soldiers accused civilians of stingy ingratitude while civilians saw the army as a threat to their liberty—Washington’s trustworthiness bound the two sides together.
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Walter Mondale's Campaign Did Accomplish Something (Ask Joe Biden's Future Running Mate)
Joel K. Goldstein
Walter Mondale's choice of Representative Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate in 1984 opened the major parties' general election tickets to women for the first time. Will Joe Biden's campaign fulfill that promise this year?
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Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods: How Bad is It?
Jerry Lembcke
A historian of public perceptions of the Vietnam War (who served as a military chaplain there) warns that Spike Lee's latest film traffics in stereotypes of both American veterans and the Vietnamese people while reinforcing right-wing narratives about the war.
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Dear Vice President Biden: Bring Achievers Back to the White House
Joseph A. Esposito
Joseph Biden is urged to remember John F. Kennedy's admiration and celebration of achievement and Franklin Roosevelt's spirit of pragmatic experimentation in his campaign. Should he be elected, he'll need inspiration to lead the nation out of dire circumstances.
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Roundup Top Ten for June 19, 2020
The week's best op-eds by historians or about history from around the web.
News
- Native Americans and Polynesians Met Around 1200 A.D.
- Campaign Urges NASA to Rename the John C. Stennis Space Center
- Confederate Statues Were Never Really About Preserving History
- Carl Reiner’s Life Should Remind Us: If You Like Laughing, Thank FDR And The New Deal
- A Teacher Held a Famous Racism Exercise in 1968. She’s Still at It.
- ‘If I tell people about what happened, I honor my ancestors.’ How the Pandemic is Helping a Slavery Historian Develop a K-12 Lesson Plan on African-American History
- In Memoriam: Historian and Politician Ivo Banac
- The Legacy of Black Lives Matter
- When American Politics Turned Toxic (Review)
- Unions Are Essential for Eliminating Racism
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