With support from the University of Richmond

History News Network

History News Network puts current events into historical perspective. Subscribe to our newsletter for new perspectives on the ways history continues to resonate in the present. Explore our archive of thousands of original op-eds and curated stories from around the web. Join us to learn more about the past, now.

Week of February 25, 2013


Up Front

HNN Hot Topics: Women's History Month
Tags: feminism, gender, Hot Topics, women, Women's History Month
Which Other Popes Have Resigned?
David Austin Walsh
At least three -- and possibly five -- pontiffs have resigned; the most recent was six hundred years ago.
Tags: Benedict XVI, Catholicism, papacy, papal resignation

HNN Teacher's Edition: For Grade School

HNN’s Teacher’s Edition is designed to help busy teachers build classes around topics in the news. With just a few minutes preparation, teachers will be able to teach a class on current events, even if they haven't been in a position to follow the news closely.

Social Security
Lesson Plan
Backgrounder
Tags: backgrounders, Grades 3-6, Social Security, Teacher's Edition

Deficits and the Debt Ceiling
Lesson Plan
Backgrounder
Tags: Teacher's Edition, deficits, debt, economic history


HNN Special: Vietnam

Review of Nick Turse's Kill Anything That Moves
Alfred W. McCoy
Every single U.S. unit that served in Vietnam was guilty of war crimes.
Tags: atrocities, Nick Turse, Vietnam War, war crimes
"I Begged for Them to Stop"
Nick Turse
Waterboarding Americans and the redefinition of torture.
Tags: war crimes, war on terror, water torture, waterboarding

Blogs

Is Health Care Too Expensive?
Steve Hochstadt
Maybe it's not that doctors are overpaid, it's that nurses are underpaid.
Tags: doctors, health care, medicine, Obamacare
Austerity Doesn't Work, and Neither Will You
Iwan Morgan
In an era of anemic growth and perennially high unemployment, policymakers aren't adapting to the circumstances.
Tags: austerity, economic growth, economic history, Great Depression

News at Home

GOP Leaders are Playing Chicken with the American Economy
Robert Brent Toplin
It's a game they've been playing for years.
Tags: conservatism, debt, Republican Party, sequestration
You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby (Or Have You?)
Ruth Rosen
The women’s movement in the next half-century.
Tags: Betty Friedan, Feminine Mystique, feminism, sexual violence

Historians & History

On Creating a Groundbreaking Historical Novel
Robin Lindley
French author Laurent Binet on HHhH and the death of Reinhard Heydrich.
Tags: HHhH, historical fiction, interviews, Laurent Binet
War is a Dirty Business
William J. Astore
It's best if we don't rush to embrace it.
Tags: World War II, Vietnam War, training, media

Culture Watch

Downton Abbey at Inverary: A History of Scotland's Most English Castle
Jonathan Gross
There's plenty of real history in the third season finale of the acclaimed series (no spoilers!).
Tags: Downton Abbey, Inverary Castle, landed gentry, nobility
 
Dr. Zhivago Makes an Angry House Call
Bruce Chadwick
Scott C. Sickles’s Lightning from Heaven tells the story of the real-life Lara.
Tags: Boris Pasternak, Dr. Zhivago, Lightning from Heaven, theater reviews
Is a House a Home in the Segregated 1950s?
Bruce Chadwick
Luck of the Irish is a solid look at Boston's racist history.
Tags: Boston, Luck of the Irish, segregation, theater reviews

Books

Review of Sam Roberts's Grand Central
Murray Polner
Did the station actually transform all of America?
Tags: book reviews, Grand Central, railroads, Sam Roberts