How We Brought the Radical History of Pirates to Life
By David Lester
The Latest 
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The Heroes of Ripley, Ohio
David Goodrich
David Goodrich bicycled 3,000 miles along the routes of the Underground Railroad, encountering the places of history from a new perspective. This excerpt follows him through the Ohio-Kentucky borderland and across the river that marked free territory.
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Can the Ukraine Crisis Push the UN To the Reforms it Needs to Remain Relevant?
Gary B. Ostrower
The United Nations' power to prevent war has long been subordinated to the protection of traditional national sovereignty. Will instability push the powerful nations on the Security Council to accept change?
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Historians Mobilize to Fight Back Against Right-Wing Attacks
Margaret Power
Historians for Peace and Democracy condemns recent legislation restricting the content of history classes and libraries and censoring the freedom to teach and learn about racism and LGBTQ history. The group urges college faculty to join with their local K-12 educators and librarians.
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Historians are Being Asked to Spin Simple Stories of Nationalism; The Past Won't Cooperate
Joe Djordjevski
Nationalist forces in both Bulgaria and North Macedonia want to use historians to reach a definitive conclusion to debates over the territory's ethnic and national identity. But from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire to the fall of Communism, those questions have been complex, difficult, and ambiguous.
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Professor Michael Kazin on the Turbulent History of American Socialism
Skipped History with Ben Tumin
“Socialists have to take power seriously in this country.”
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Reflecting on Netflix's "Women at War"
Walter G. Moss
The Netflix series focuses on the relationship of several French women to the mass carnage of the opening months of the First World War.
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The "Critical Race Theory" Controversy Continues
The appointment of right-wing activist Christopher Rufo to the board of Florida's public New College is a significant escalation of the war on teaching and research on race, gender and sexuality.
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The Roundup Top Ten for February 3, 2023
The top opinion writing by historians and about history from around the web this week.
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No Golden Anniversary for the Paris Peace Accords
Arnold R. Isaacs
While the West observes January 27 as the anniversary of the agreement, it was already January 28 in Vietnam when the accords took effect, a telling symbol of the disjunction between American and Vietnamese views of the conflict and its stakes that contributed to their tragic failure.
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David Maraniss Follows Jim Thorpe's "Path Lit by Lighting"
Robin Lindley
The first comprehensive biography of the acclaimed Native athlete shifts the frame from "tragedy" to "persistence against the odds" in parallel to the changes and challenges fac...
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A Portrait of Carlos Franqui
Ken Weisbrode
The autodidact poet, journalist and propagandist Carlos Franqui was instrumental in making the Cuban revolution chic. He was also one of the first of the revolutionary generation to abandon it.
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50 Years After the Paris Accords: How the US Lost, then Won, in Vietnam
Robert Buzzanco
As Vietnam becomes increasingly integrated into global capitalism, the temptation to identify a long-term victory for American interests in southeast Asia should be tempered by awareness of the massive human cost paid by the Vietnamese.
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"Cut His Head Off if Necessary"—The Flimsy, Politically-Driven "Peace" Nixon Made in Vietnam
James D. Robenalt
Months after inflicting a brutal bombing campaign on North Vietnam to push them to the negotiating table in Paris, Richard Nixon pressed the South to accept a deal that doomed their survival, in order to claim the mantle of peacemaker for himself.
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On Ukraine, International Law is Against Russia—But to What Consequence?
Lawrence Wittner
If the United Nations can define the rules of international relations, but sufficiently powerful nations can flout them without consequence, it's time for a change in global governance.
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Latino Activists Changed San Antonio in the 1960s
Ricardo Romo
San Antonio in the 1960s faced many of the same challenges of cities throughout the South; its emerging Mexican American political leadership helped steer the city in a progressive direction.
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Blog
Lesley M.M. Blume on Hiroshima and Nuclear War
Skipped History with Ben Tumin
"What are we capable of when we’ve dehumanized another race or country on a big scale?"
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The Roundup Top Ten for January 27, 2023
The top opinion writing by historians and about history from around the web this week.
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The US is a Procedural, Not a Substantive, Democracy
Van Gosse
"The United States is well on its way to becoming a strictly procedural democracy, wherein legal and constitutional norms are observed, but the core requirements for democratic decision-making—the rule of the majority, the right of all citizens to vote without hindrance—are ignored."
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Why CRT Belongs in the Classroom, and How to Do It Right
Stacie Brensilver Berman, Robert Cohen, and Ryan Mills
"If classroom realities matter at all to those governors and state legislators who imposed CRT bans on schools, they ought to be embarrassed at having barred students in their states from the kind of thought provoking teaching we witnessed in this project."
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What's Hiding in Putin's Family History?
Chris Monday
The details of Vladimir Putin's personal and family life are surprisingly (and by design) difficult to pin down. A historian suggests that his grandfather was more powerful, and more influential on the future Russian leader's fortunes, than Putin's common man mythology suggests.
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Do Sanctions on Russia Portend a Return to the Interwar Order of Trade Blocs?
Carl J. Strikwerda
The economic response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine has raised the specter of a new Cold War. But a better—and scarier—analogy might be the drastic contraction of global trade and the rise of colonial and imperial trade blocs between the World Wars.
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The Pope at War: Pius XII and the Vatican's Secret Archives
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.
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"The Dawn of Everything" Stretches its Evidence, But Makes Bold Arguments about Human Social Life
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.
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As the Progressive Era Ideal of Regulation Vanishes, What Will Stop the March of AI?
Walter G. Moss
If capital decides that artificial intelligence is sufficiently profitable to put in charge of driving our cars, writing our essays, or even teaching our history classes, what is left to stop it, even if the products are terrible or even dangerous?
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The Roundup Top Ten for January 20, 2023
The top opinion writing by historians and about history from around the web this week.
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