Richmond’s Robert E. Lee Statue: A Southern Unionist’s Viewpoint
By Elizabeth Varon
The Latest 
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Trump's Executive Order Censors Free Speech on College Campuses
Ed Simon
The House Un-American Activities Committee and the real intent of Trump's "free speech" executive order.
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Blog
What is Antisemitism?
Steve Hochstadt
Many, perhaps most accusations of antisemitism are made in good faith for the purpose of calling attention to real religious prejudice. B...
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Blog
Mike Pence Says the US Has Been "A Force For Good in the Middle East" for "nearly 200 years"; Here's How Historians Responded
Checkered History
Eight Middle East historians contribute to a history check on the vice president's claim of 200 years of American goodness.
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Roundup Top 10!
This week's broad sampling of opinion pieces found on the Internet, as selected by the editors of HNN.
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Andy Warhol: A Lot More than Soup Cans
Bruce Chadwick
A review of the Whitney Musem's exhibit Andy Warhol – From A to B and Back Again and a reflection on the artist.
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Parents, College, Money, and the American Dream
Janet Golden
At a time when less than 20 percent of Americans completed high school and far fewer went on to higher education, financial institutions told parents to start saving for college.
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The Antigay "Traditional Plan" and the History of the Methodist Church
Christopher M. Bishop
Until this month, slavery was the only other issue that seriously threatened the unity of American Methodism.
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The Death of Appeasement: the 80th Anniversary of the Invasion of Prague
Yoav J. Tenembaum
March 1939 was the real turning point in international relations. September 1939 was to be the climax.
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Why is the Mona Lisa not the Mona Lisa?
Jean-Pierre Isbouts and Christopher Brown
New research suggests the famous painting in the Louvre does not depict Mona Lisa.
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London at War, 1941, and a New Alice in Wonderland
Bruce Chadwick
Can you really spend a better evening than chasing a white rabbit trotting through the forest with a pocket watch in his hand? A review of Alice By Heart.
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Why the U.S. Bombed Auschwitz, But Didn't Save the Jews
Rafael Medoff
Seventy-five years ago this week—on March 19, 1944—German troops marched into Hungary. The country’s 800,000 Jews, the last major Jewish community to have eluded the raging Holocaust, now lay within Hitler’s grasp.
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History Will Clash With History in the 2020 Election
Ronald L. Feinman
Three different historical precedents all suggest a different outcome in 2020.
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Blog
The History of International Women’s Day and the Ongoing Fight for Gender Equality
Steve Hochstadt
International Women’s Day serves to highlight the remaining gender inequality in our society.
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Roundup Top 10!
This week's broad sampling of opinion pieces found on the Internet, as selected by the editors of HNN.
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Blog
Mennonite Values
Jim Loewen
"At the end of my life, I publish these lines thinking that they may come to be meaningful to you."
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What Historians Are Saying About the College Admissions Scandal
Historians respond to Operation Varsity Blues.
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The Most Alarming Argument in Jill Lepore's These Truths
Walter G. Moss
How technology has destablized our world and why there's still hope.
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What I’m Reading: An Interview With Civil War Historian Anne Sarah Rubin
Erik Moshe
“To hold your own book is to have achieved something permanent in an ephemeral world.”
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Hitler's Own Maginot Line
Robert Scott Kellner
What the diary of a German against the Third Reich can teach us about the Atlantic Wall.
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Lessons from Studying Corporate History and the Case of IBM
James W. Cortada
And what it can teach us about the longevity of corporations.
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Robinson Crusoe’s Wall
Geoffrey Sill
We can look to history, especially literary and cultural history, to explain the passionate desire of many Americans to build a wall.
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How the Allies Won on D-Day
Giles Milton
A ground-breaking account of the first 24 hours of the D-Day invasion told by a symphony of incredible accounts of unknown and unheralded members of the Allied – and Axis – forces.
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Three Unexpected Deaths That Shaped Presidential History
Ronald L. Feinman
Unexpected tragedy in the lives of three political leaders—John F. Kennedy, Jr., Paul Wellstone, and Joe Biden—demonstrate the profound impact of chance on political history.
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A Historian Reflects on a Long Life
Vaughn Davis Bornet
In this personal essay, historian Vaughn Davis Bornet offers his advice on living a long life.
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What Historians Are Tweeting: The Women Historians Who Inspire on International Women's Day
Dr. Sarah Bond (@SarahEBond) asked "How did your female mentor make a difference in your career?" Here are some of the responses.
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Blog
Can Artists Remake Society?
Steve Hochstadt
One of the most striking changes triggered by the November Revolution in Germany, and more generally the revolutions in eastern Europe provoked by the Russian Revolution, was the conquest of the ar...
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Writer Amiri Baraka and the Endless Controversies
Bruce Chadwick
A review of Looking for LeRoy, a play about one of the most controversial playwrights and poets in American history
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Roundup Top 10!
This week's broad sampling of opinion pieces found on the Internet, as selected by the editors of HNN.
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The English Diggers, the "Commons," and the Green New Deal
Ed Simon
The idea of the “commons” as a space of collective ownership, responsibility, engagement, and possibility must be a metaphor that the left draws from rhetorically.
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Genocide Denial In Bosnia: A Danger to Europe and to the World
Albinko Hasic
The same de-humanizing philosophy which fed into ethnic and religious tropes leading to genocide is back, perhaps stronger than ever.
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The Entangled History of “America First” and “The American Dream"
James Thornton Harris
Sarah Churchwell unravels the complicated history behind “America First” in her new book Behold America.
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What I’m Reading: An Interview With Public Historian Amanda Higgins
Erik Moshe
“The best historians are removing the layer between the finished thing and the work to get to that finished project.”
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Will the U.S. Government Abide by the International Law It Created in Venezuela?
Lawrence Wittner
And how the U.S. government has violated these principles of international law in the past.
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Remembering Audrey Hepburn's Best Role
William Lambers
How her experiences as a child motivated her commitment to ending children's hunger.
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Is Bernie Sanders Actually A Democratic Socialist?
Michael Sheng
"For the sake of history, please tell your voters what you really believe, and don’t just throw out a label without a precise definition."
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Battlefield Tourism At Ypres and How Public History Sites Change
Mark Connelly and Stefan Goebel
Modern Ypres or Ieper is a world forged and shaped in the furnace of a conflict that ended one hundred years ago this November.
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What FDR Can Teach Us About Congress and National Emergencies
Martin Halpern
Seventy-five years ago this week, there was a serious conflict between President Franklin Roosevelt and Congress.
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Roundup Top 10!
This week's broad sampling of opinion pieces found on the Internet, as selected by the editors of HNN.
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Levittown, PA and The “Northern Promised Land That Wasn't”
Jasmine Torres and Alan Singer
Levittown, Pennsylvania violently errupted when William and Daisy Myers moved into the suburban town in 1957.
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What Can the Humanities Teach Us About Big Data?
Jo Guldi
The "Critical Search" techniques of Big Data uncover the nuances and patterns of the past in the Humanities.
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Teaching the Fall of the Roman Republic During the Trump Presidency
Edward Watts
My students are trying to understand Rome’s mistakes and discover sources of its political resilience.
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UPDATED: What Historians are Saying: In Response to Max Boot's Op Ed on Historians
Max Boot published an article saying historians are not engaged enough with the public. Here's how historians reacted.
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Why Preserving Historical Places and Sites Matters
Thompson Mayes
Historical sites can become the vortex and venue for understanding our changing civic and national identity.
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One Of The Greatest Cover-Ups Of The 20th Century
John Heminway
A quest to learn more about a friend after her death revealed shocking secrets.
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What Can One Ecologist Teach Historians?
John Gaudet
Ecology can help substantiate historical changes that might otherwise go unnoticed.
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A Dozen Books To Help Weather The Political Storm
John T. Shaw
The discipline of serious reading helps us slow down, think more carefully, weigh evidence, and respect - and expect - careful argument.
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The Many Joys of Writing History
Walter G. Moss
It is the chance to stand back and observe the whole human story, with all its tragedies and comedies, and like Shakespeare think “What a piece of work is man!”
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What 2020 Presidential Hopefuls Can Learn From Carter, Clinton, and Obama's Foreign Policy
Ronald L. Feinman
It would be wise if the next President of the United States examined the records of accomplishment in foreign policy of the three most recent Democratic Presidents.
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What I’m Reading: An Interview With Russianist Historian Katherine Antonova
Erik Moshe
A historian sees what happened in the past not as a set story, but as disparate bits of evidence that might or might not cohere enough to answer our questions.
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The Price of Thomas Scott is Pretty High
Bruce Chadwick
The drama is a sturdy look at the lives of women in that era and shows how thousands of them found work in millinery and other women’s’ shops, creating a whole new underclass of fashion workers.
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Why Aren't Americans More Enraged About Russian Interference? World War 2 History Helps Explain
William K. Klingaman
Even after Pearl Harbor, "the Greatest Generation" was often complacent about foriegn threats.
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The Polar Bear Expedition: When America Intervened in Russian Affairs
James Carl Nelson
As allegations and investigations swirl around the questions of Russian intervention in our 2016 elections, it’s worth a look back one hundred years to our own intervention in Russia.
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Roundup Top 10!
This week's broad sampling of opinion pieces found on the Internet, as selected by the editors of HNN.
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We Need to Acknowledge the Power of the Israel Lobby
Walter L. Hixson
Israel and its American supporters have assembled the most powerful lobby pursuing the interests of a foreign country in all American history.
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“National Security Crisis” or “Power Grab”?
M. Andrew Holowchak
It’s not the Constitutionality of Trump’s Wall, but Its Morality that Matters
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Proof that Bombs Can Stop Genocide
Rafael Medoff
If President Roosevelt had heeded the pleas that were made in 1944 to use force against the machinery of genocide, many lives could have been saved.
News
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- Destroying Istanbul to 'Restore' It
- “Votes For Women," an Upcoming Exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery, Highlights the Bold Accomplishments of Women of Color
- Medgar Evers' home established as a national monument in Jackson
- MIT Historian Kate Brown Alleges United Nations Scientific Cover-Up Of Death And Disease Toll From Chernobyl
- Atlanta’s Civil War Monument, Minus the Pro-Confederate Bunkum
- In the age of distraction, one small publisher keeps local history alive in sepia tones
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