Current Events that Relate to History
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LongreadDoes America Have a Founding Philosophy?
It depends on how you read the Declaration’s “self-evident” truths.Modern Age -
AntecedentThe 19th-Century Precursors to the Crises of Trump’s America
Revisiting history shows that violence and constitutional disputes are nothing new in US politics.New Lines -
RetrievalGimme Boer
The recent resettlement of a few dozen Afrikaner “refugees” points to a longer history of U.S. fascination with these Dutch-descended white South Africans.The Baffler -
Longread‘The Canal Is Ours’
Trump’s threats to take control of the Panama Canal have precipitated a struggle over the country’s sovereignty.New York Review of Books -
Book ReviewColony, Aviary and Zoo: New York Intellectuals
A new book examines the aggressive masculinity that the editors of the Partisan Review brought to their art and literary criticism.London Review of Books -
CommentThe Decline and Fall of Christianity in America
If we imagine religion as a technology, argues Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith, we can better see the cause of its decline: obsolescence.The Bulwark -
exhibit“Natural” Disasters
A collection of stories about previous generations’ ways of dealing with meteorological calamity and its aftermath..
From the HNN Archive
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How to Succeed in Government Without Really Trying
The long history of promising an “efficient” federal government. -
So Ductile Is History in the Hands of Man!
The past and present of counterfactual history, from antiquity to the Napoleonic Wars to a few very active subreddits. -
Indifferent to the Fate of Freedom Elsewhere
Jimmy Carter is known for his defense of human rights worldwide. But in 1979, he threatened to deport thousands of Iranian student protesters. -
An Attempt to Defeat Constitutional Order
After the Civil War, conservatives used terrorism, cold-blooded murder, and economic coercion to fight the new state constitution in South Carolina. -
Whose Side Are College Administrators On?
There’s a long history of politicians targeting student protesters — and of campus leaders abetting those efforts. -
Solve for AI
What the history of the pocket calculator reveals about the future of AI in classrooms. -
“At Any Future Time”
In 1880, the daughter of a Welsh politician turned to fiction to expose perspectives missing from the official record, upending histories for generations to come. -
Letting the World Scream
In 1984, the U.S. rejected the International Court of Justice’s jurisdiction, revealing its tendency to ignore international rules it sees as unfavorable — even when it helped write them. -
Scared Out of the Community
Between 1929 and 1939 approximately half a million Mexicans left the United States. Many of the departing families included American-born children to whom Mexico, not the United States, was the foreign land. -
When Good Housekeeping Meant Getting Vaccinated Against Polio
The pages of 1950s lifestyle magazines offer a glimpse of a time when childhood vaccines were anything but controversial.