Current Events that Relate to History
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ArgumentTrump Should Revive Jacksonian Military Attitudes
The worship of military technocrats underwrites American failures abroad.The American Conservative -
Book ExcerptBeyond Brown: The Failure of Desegregation in the North and America’s Lingering Racial Fault Lines
On the ongoing legal struggle for educational and racial equality across the United States.Literary Hub -
AntecedentThe Key to Success for Musk, Ramaswamy, and DOGE
Theodore Roosevelt started a version of DOGE too, but it failed to achieve much after Congress rejected its recommendations.Made By History -
Music ReviewJazz Off the Record
In the late 1960s, in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, jazz legends were playing the best music you’ve never heard.The Nation -
AntecedentMcCarthyism Is Alive and Well With the “Nonprofit Killer” Bill
Today’s legislative efforts against the Palestine solidarity movement bear a striking resemblance to McCarthyism in both tactics and ideology.Jacobin -
Comment
When Presidents Sent Handwritten Lists of Their Nominees to the Senate
The U.S. faces the likelihood of a bruising and raucous set of confirmation hearings — a clear break from the cooperative system the founders established.The Conversation -
exhibitLegacies of Jimmy Carter
Historical reappraisals of Carter's legacies in foreign relations, the economy, the environment, and electoral politics.
From the HNN Archive
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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. -
The Burned-Over District
The Northeast caught fire this fall, in a way that recalls its past. History has some lessons about how to manage the region’s fire seasons to come. -
The Other Sherman’s March
How the younger brother of the famous general set out to destroy the scourge of monopoly power. -
Knight Club
Were the Knights of the Golden Circle responsible for Lincoln’s assassination? No one knows, but far-right secret societies always draw power from speculation. -
The Forebears of JD Vance and the New Right
Revisiting the Agrarian-Distributists and their fabrication of an American past. -
Nuggets of Condescension
By universalizing their own economic history, Western observers have used the past to portray African economic culture as backward and inadequate.