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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.

Roundup Top 10!


Pop Culture Roundup: This Week

This week: Cervantes, Harriet Tubman, Reagan movie, a gay bookstore and more.


Social Media News: What Historians Are Talking About

This week: Niall Ferguson leaves Harvard, Mary Beard has a new show on TV, Tim Naftali on being presidential, and lots more.


Trump's 'America First' has ugly echoes from U.S. history

by Susan Dunn

Donald Trump chose to brand his foreign policy with the noxious slogan "America First," the name of the isolationist, defeatist, anti-Semitic national organization that urged the United States to appease Adolf Hitler.


African-American Voters Have an Understandable Reason to Support Hillary Clinton

by Eric Foner

“[F]or black Carolinians, the challenge today seems to be holding on to gains that are under assault rather than seeking further progress.


Donald Trump, our terrifying Lone Ranger: The GOP front-runner acts like the president is above the law

by Rick Perlstein

Can old-fashioned democracy survive when the law is reduced to one man's will?


What Bernie Sanders Should Learn From Eugene McCarthy

by Julian E. Zelizer

In 1968, the Democratic insurgent refused to support the establishment nominee—and it was disastrous.


Not Everything Is Munich and Hitler

by David A. Bell

Is our culture suffering from an excess of historical awareness?


The Real Meaning of Donald Trump

by Tom Engelhardt

He’s a Sign of American Decline (Just Not in the Way You Think)


What's wrong with our politics? What Thomas Frank & Steve Fraser think.

by Beverly Gage

In a book review, Beverly Gage critiques two books: Thomas Frank's "Listen Liberal" and Steve Fraser's "The Limousine Liberal."


The Party of Lincoln in the Time of Trump

by Sidney Blumenthal

The Republicans are now going the way of the Whigs—by embracing the politics that helped destroy them.


Who should Trump and Clinton pick as running mates? This research says it doesn’t really matter.

by Christopher J. Devine and Kyle C. Kopko

Much of what you’ve been told about the importance of the usual factors is wrong.


Who is “victorious?”: transformed American meanings of war and power

by Louis René Beres

What if there is no longer a meaningfully determinable way to calculate victory and defeat?