Books 
-
3/19/2023
When World War II Pacifists "Conquered the Future"
by Eric Laursen
Daniel Akst profiles the pacifists who opposed American involvement in the Second World War and their influence on the civil rights and peace movements that followed.
-
2/26/2023
Christopher Gorham Gives the Remarkable Anna Marie Rosenberg the Bio She Deserves
by Kathryn Smith
From the New Deal's NRA to the Manhattan Project's labor needs, and from the launch of Social Security to JFK's famous birthday party featuring Marilyn Monroe, Rosenberg was a master facilitator who had a hand in many of the policies that shaped modern America, as a compelling new biography explains.
-
1/22/2023
The Pope at War: Pius XII and the Vatican's Secret Archives
by James Thornton Harris
David Kertzer's book argues that defenders of Pope Pius XII's actions during the Holocaust mistake his defense of the prerogatives of the Catholic Church for a defense of the victims of Nazi persecution and genocide.
-
1/22/2022
"The Dawn of Everything" Stretches its Evidence, But Makes Bold Arguments about Human Social Life
by Frank A. Palmeri
David Graeber and David Wengrow seek to pull less hierarchical and more egalitarian and sustainable forms of settlement and social organization out of the frame of utopia and into the narrative of human history. To the extent they succeed, they show humanity today has the choice to organize ourselves for survival.
-
1/15/2023
Martin Sherwin's "Gambling with Armageddon" Strips away the Myths of Nuclear Deterrence
by Lawrence Wittner
As Sherwin points out, “the real lesson of the Cuban missile crisis . . . is that nuclear armaments create the perils they are deployed to prevent, but are of little use in resolving them.”
-
12/4/2022
Rediscovering the Lost Midwest (Excerpt)
by Jon K. Lauck
The contemporary troubles of the Midwest shouldn't blind historians and readers to the region's important history as an incubator of a democratic culture.
-
11/20/2022
James M. Scott's "Black Snow" Traces the Line from Tokyo to Hiroshima
by James Thornton Harris
"LeMay’s operation really served as an important trial balloon to see how the American public would respond to the mass killing of enemy civilians.... To the surprise of many in Washington, however, the American public voiced no real objection."
-
11/6/2022
Lindsey Fitzharris on the Pioneering Facial Reconstruction Surgeon Who Remade the Faces of Great War Veterans
by James Thornton Harris
As one battlefield nurse wrote home, “the science of healing stood baffled before the science of destroying.” Dr. Harold Gillies let the effort to catch up, arguably the only lasting "victory" of the Great War.
-
10/23/2022
Isaac Sears and the Roots of America in New York
by Sam Roberts
The career of merchant and patriot Isaac Sears highlights the underappreciated role of New York City in the movement for American independence.
-
10/2/2022
Dangerous Rhythms: Jazz and the Criminal Underworld
by James Thornton Harris
T.J. English examines the relationship between jazz and organized crime in Prohibition America, and how the music moved on from the mob.
-
9/11/2022
Songs for Sale: Tin Pan Alley (Excerpt)
by Bob Stanley
American popular music didn't start with Elvis. It emerged when musical fads onstage converged with a new mass market for in-home record players to make song publishing big business.
-
9/11/2022
Inflation Opened the Door to American Neoliberalism
by Thom Hartmann
An inflationary crisis proved to be the justification for reworking the American political economy in the direction of the vast inequality we observe today.
-
8/7/2022
Healing a Divided Nation
by Carole Adrienne
From specialized trauma care to emergency transportation to board certification of physicians, when we encounter the medical system today, we are experiencing Civil War medicine.
-
7/31/2022
Kathryn Olmsted's "Newspaper Axis" Shows Media Extremism Nothing New
by Kathryn Smith
FDR's success in promoting the New Deal and rallying Americans to the defense of Europe against fascism was a triumph over the nation's right-wing newspaper barons.
-
7/24/2022
Learning About Stalin from His Books: An Interview with Geoffrey Roberts
by Aaron J. Leonard
Researchers who access Stalin's books will find the dictator's library a source of insight into his political thinking and engagement with ideas (and his pithy marginalia), but not a Rosetta Stone for understanding his capacity for atrocity.
-
7/8/2022
The Story of the School that Defied Nazi Ideological Control
by Deborah Cadbury
Amid the intense politicization of education today, what can we learn from one remarkable story of a teacher's defiance of official ideological control?
-
7/3/2022
Excerpt: INAUGURAL BALLERS: The True Story of the First U.S. Olympic Women’s Basketball Team
by Andrew Maraniss
“Win this game,” Billie Moore told her team, “and it will change women’s sports in this country for the next twenty-five years.”
-
6/12/2022
Excerpt: The Fires of Stavishche, 1919
by Lisa Brahin
Between 1917 and 1921, an estimated 100,000 to 250,000 Jews were murdered in pogroms across Ukraine. The author has worked to reconstruct this history, including her ancestors' escape from the town of Stavishche.
-
5/29/2022
A History of Art for Our Times
by Charlotte Mullins
The classic works of art history tell a story of great artists, overwhelmingly European and male. The author's new history refocuses the narrative on the diverse networks of creators through which art is made – networks crossing lines of geography and including women artists and artists of color.
-
SOURCE: The Atlantic
5/18/2022
Historians Disagree with Alito: Roe Didn't Create Polarization
by Adam Serwer
The idea that the 1973 Roe decision created polarized politics around the Supreme Court ignores the decades-long backlash to Brown v. Board of Education and other decisions of the Warren Court and the contested politics of abortion before Roe.
News
- Chair of Florida Charter School Board on Firing of Principal: About Policy, Not David Statue
- Graduate Student Strikes Fight Back Against Decades of Austerity, Seek to Revive Opportunity
- When Right Wingers Struggle with Defining "Woke" it Shows they Oppose Pursuing Equality
- Strangelove on the Square: Secret USAF Films Showed Airmen What to Expect if Nuclear War Broke Out
- The Women of the Montgomery Bus Boycott
- New Books Force Consideration of Reconstruction's End from Black Perspective
- Excerpt: How Apartheid South Africa Tried to Create a Libertarian Utopia
- Historian's Book on 1970s NBA Shows Racial Politics around Basketball Have Always Been Ugly
- Kendi: "Anti-woke" Part of Backlash Against Antiracist Protest Movements
- Monica Muñoz Martinez Honored for Truth-Telling in Texas History