The Latest

• 
• 7-29-14
  News at Home

  The U.S. Must Take an Honest Look at the Costs of Spaceflight

  Jonathan Coopersmith

  Since 1969, NASA has unsuccessfully struggled with three underlying problems.

• 
• 7-29-14
  News at Home

  Why We Don’t Go to the Moon Anymore

  Matthew D. Tribbe

  In short, “the Sixties” happened, and the space program has never recovered.

• 
• News

  HNN News Headlines

  HNN features news headlines about both history and historians. Sign up for daily updates.

• 
• 7-27-14
  News Abroad

  After the Shooting Down of MH 17 ...  We Are All Waiting for Something to Happen

  Juliane Fuerst

  On July 17, flight MH 17 fell out of the sky and into a field near a village in Eastern Ukraine. A few hours later the world had changed.

• 
• News Abroad

  Where Is The Passion for Peace?

  Walter G. Moss

  Today, as conflicts and bloodshed occur in Ukraine (and Gaza, Syria, and elsewhere), we wonder why in the past century we have advanced so little in our ability to prevent such senseless wars.

• 
• 7-24-14
  News Abroad

  Putin's Hands May Be Bloody, but this Was No Re-Run of KAL 007

  Mark B. Tauger

  While the claims of denial may be similar, however, the comparison between the events themselves does not hold up.

• 
• 7-25-14
  News at Home

  Why Do We Have an Illegal Immigration Problem from Central America? We Should Know. We Helped Create It.

  William Schell, Jr.

  Here's how this happened.

• 
• 7-27-14
  Historians/History

  Five Questions About World War I that Remain Unanswered

  J. Fred MacDonald

  The following questions remain definitively unanswered.

• 
• 7-28-14
  Historians/History

  How "Five Old Men" Started the Roll-Back of Hiroshima Revisionism

  D. M. Giangreco

  "The revisionists who came of age during the ban-the-bomb 50s and psychedelic 60s were a bit too impatient."

• 
• 7-27-14
  Historians/History

  So You Want to Get Good Scores on Rate My Professor?

  Thomas Buttaccio

  Secrets of professors who score high.

• 
• 7-22-14
  News Abroad

  Is this What 1914 Looks Like in the 21st Century?

  Jonathan Schell

  Then came the attack of September 11th.

• 
• 7-27-14
  Historians/History

  Why Doesn't Everybody Know Who Alice Paul Was and What She Did?

  J.D. Zahniser

  She organized the first march on Washington. Her cause? Women's suffrage.

• 
• 7-27-14
  Historians/History

  This Generation Changed America – And We Don't Think It too Made a Great Contribution?

  Ron Briley

  Modern memory continues to perceive the post-World War II baby boomers of the 1960s as hippies interested in self-gratification, while their parents struggled through the Great Depression and Second World War.

• 
• 7-24-14
  Historians/History

  The Longest Battle of the First World War: Historian Paul Jankowski on the Slaughterhouse of Verdun (Interview)

  Robin Lindley

  "Next to cultural fantasies historical truths can appear as sacrilegious, but to demystify Verdun is not to impugn the compelling power of the truths behind legend, nostalgia or parable." -- Paul Jankowski

• 

• I'm gonna wash that crime right out of my . . .

  Re: The Senate Intelligence Committee CIA Report

  Joshua Brown

• 
• 7-27-14
  News at Home

  What Went Wrong with the American Experiment?

  Jim Sleeper

  "Jim Sleeper is the Jonathan Edwards of civic-republicanism--and anism--and that's a compliment.”— Hendrick Hertzberg

• 
• 7-27-14
  Historians/History

  Why We Should Remember Lionel Ferbos for More than His Trumpet

  Mary Niall Mitchell

  For jazz historians, and for the musicians who played with him for many years, Ferbos was another kind of link to the past.

• 
• 7-25-14
  Roundup

  Roundup Top 10!

  This week's broad sampling of opinion pieces found on the Internet, as selected by the editors of HNN.

• 
• 7-19-14
  News Abroad

  Three Lessons We Need to Heed from the Soviet Downing of KAL 007

  Walter G. Moss

  Gorbachev and Reagan found a way to end the Cold War. Presidents Putin and Obama need to follow their example.

• 

• Historical Humility

  The great advantage historians have is that we know how the story ends. 

  Mark Byrnes's Facing Backwards

• 
• 7-18-14
  Historians/History

  Which Historians Have Made Bank in the United States?

  Alexandra M. Webster

  An old joke goes, “Become a historian. Get rich.” But for some historians it’s no joke.

• 
• 7-18-14
  News at Home

  Why Are Campus Administrators Making So Much Money?

  Lawrence S. Wittner

  Whatever the plight of faculty and students, these are boom times for campus administrators.

• 
• 7-17-14
  News Abroad

  The Curse of The Occupation

  Dr. Alon Ben-Meir

  To be sure, occupation is a curse that dehumanizes both the occupier and the occupied. It runs contrary to every tenet of humanity.

• 
• 7-19-14
  Historians/History

  Why Didn't Anyone Kill Hitler?

  Daniel Mandel

  70 years ago this week came the most serious attempt on his life. 

• 
• 7-20-14
  News at Home

  Shouldn't the People Who Build Cities Be Able to Live in Them?

  Pearl Duncan

  Recently, there has been discussion in New York and other cities about affordable housing for people who are workers.

• 
• 7-20-14
  News at Home

  That Summer You're Enjoying? What Few Realize.

  Jackson Murphy

  Until the 20th century, Summer (as we know it) was for the rich.

• 
• 7-20-14
  Historians/History

  Why a Contrarian History of the United States Is Needed Now

  Ilan Stavans

  I’m tired of the hypocritical way immigrants are constantly being described today in public discourse.

• 
• 7-20-14
  News Abroad

  Is It 1914 All Over Again, Only this Time in Asia?

  Tom Clifford

  No one in Asia is expecting war, but there is whiff of something in the air.

• 
• 7-20-14
  Historians/History

  The Brutal Reality of the Iraq War: An Interview with Award-Winning Photographer Michael Kamber on the Hidden War Seen by Photojournalists

  Robin Lindley

  In war, the photographer is the silent witness.

• 
• 7-20-14
  Historians/History

  How a Book Reviewer Got My Book Wrong

  Jonathan Israel

  A response to the book critic who trashed my book, “Revolutionary Ideas,” in the New York Review of Books.

• 
• 7-7-14
  Books

  Review of Keith Thomson’s "Jefferson’s Shadow: The Story of His Science"

  M. Andrew Holowchak

  While books on Jefferson’s intimate life are superabundant, books on Jefferson’s views of science are infrequent.

• 
• 7-9-14
  Books

  Review of Frank Zelko's "Make It a Green Peace!: The Rise of Countercultural Environmentalism"

  Ron Briley

  Zelco’s history comes off as somewhat of an insider account in which the diverse personalities and world views of Greenpeace founders are developed in considerable detail.