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History News Network

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Roundup Top 10!


South Carolina’s warped public display of its white-supremacist history confronts South Carolinians, white and black, with a stark message about who rules the state.

by Eric Foner

Liberals have reason to rejoice

by Julian Zelizer

But they should still not be sanguine. They shouldn't go too far in thinking that the nation is all of a sudden trending to the left.


Suffragist Belle La Follette earned a spot on the $10 bill

by Nancy C. Unger

The winner should be someone who fought for everyone’s rights


Han Chinese Marriage: A Lesson for Chief Justice John Roberts

by Andrew Meyer

Marriage has evolved (much more recently than most people imagine) to become a relationship between equals, thus there is no justification to exclude same-gender couples from the marital bond.


It’s Not Just the Confederate Flag

by William Loren Katz

The Confederate flag represents a threat to citizens of color, a symbol of treason against the United States, and a war fought on behalf of slaveholders.


A New Deal for Greece?

by Bill Kelson

Like the Roosevelt administration of the 1930s, Syriza and its coalition partners want to break Greece out of a straightjacket of budgetary constraints.


Sexism in science: did Watson and Crick really steal Rosalind Franklin’s data?

by Matthew Cobb

The race to uncover the structure of DNA reveals fascinating insights into how Franklin’s data was key to the double helix model, but the ‘stealing’ myth stems from Watson’s memoir and attitude rather than facts


Bring down the Confederate flag, not memory of Civil War fallen

by Jonathan Zimmerman

In the wake of the Charleston murders, the campaign against the Confederate flag has morphed into attacks on other historical vestiges of the Confederacy itself. And anyone who cares about history should be alarmed by that.


The President Against the Historian

by Bret Stephens

Michael Oren’s candid account of Obama’s Mideast policy has won him the right enemies.


"Hi, I'm Uncle Sam and I'm a War-oholic"

by William Astore

War on drugs. War on poverty. War in Afghanistan. War in Iraq. War on terror. The biggest mistake in American policy, foreign and domestic, is looking at everything as war.