Books

• 
• 11/21/2021
  

  Perlstein's "Reaganland" Sheds New Light on a Familiar Story

  by Ron Steinman

  Rick Perlstein's "Reaganland" captures details of the 1980 campaign that weren't obvious even to political journalists covering Reagan's ultimately successful mission to take the conservative movement to the White House. 

• 
• 11/14/2021
  

  What "Forget the Alamo" Forgets

  by James W. Russell

  "Forget the Alamo" is ultimately constrained by American unwillingness to fully deal with the reality that the US forcibly stole Texas and the southwest from Mexico.

• 
• 11/7/2021
  

  Tom Standage on his Brief History of Motion

  by James Thornton Harris

  Author Tom Standage discusses his history of personal transportation, the future of private automobile ownership, and the power of technology as a driver of history.

• 
• 10/17/2021
  

  "The Essential Kerner Commission Report" Links Past and Present, but Abridges the Committee's Process

  by James Thornton Harris

  The Kerner Commission shocked Lyndon Johnson and much of white America by insisting that "the Negro problem" was in fact a problem of pervasive white racism. Two books are essential reading for understanding the commission's work and it's unmet demands. 

• 
• 9/26/2021
  

  The Border and the Contingent Status of Mexican Workers

  by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

  In this excerpt from her new book "Not 'A Nation of Immigrants'," Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz argues that the politics of the border and the racialization of Mexican laborers has been a longstanding and glaring exception to the American myth of welcoming immigrants. 

• 
• 9/5/2021
  

  Review: Heroes of Ireland's Great Hunger

  by Alan J. Singer

  Christine Kinealy and her co-editors enlist top scholars from both sides of the Atlantic to highlight the stories of individuals and who led efforts for hunger relief against the opposition of the British government. 

• 
• 9/5/2021
  

  The Scandalous Six Week Walk That Inspired D. H. Lawrence's Most Popular Novels (excerpt)

  by Annabel Abbs

  In 1912, Frieda von Richthofen made a six-week hike from Bavaria to northern Italy with her lover D.H. Lawrence. It was, for him, a journey of of inspiration. For her, it was a more complicated search for liberation. 

• 
• 9/5/2021
  

  Lafayette as "The Nation’s Guest" (1824-1825)

  by Mike Duncan

  When Lafayette returned to America in 1824, he found the new nation already torn between his beloved ideal of liberty and the entrenched institution of slavery. HNN presents an excerpt from Mike Duncan's new book "Hero of Two Worlds." 

• 
• 8/15/2021
  

  Children Versus Cars: The First Road Safety Campaigns (Excerpt)

  by Tom Sandage

  As outrage over road deaths gave way to laws clarifying expected behavior by street users, pedestrians surrendered much of their free access to the street to drivers. 

• 
• 8/8/2021
  

  Recessional: The WASP and God (excerpt)

  by Michael Knox Beran

  "We  may  enjoy  the  poetry  of  the  fair  sheepfold  without  believing  in  the shepherd himself. But when we come to the achievement of the WASPs, their public service, their standards of conduct, their faith in the possibility of regeneration, we find that it owed a good deal to their conviction that there is a shepherd."

• 
• 8/1/2021
  

  "Forget the Alamo" Synthesizes Revisionist Scholarship for Today's History Wars

  by James Thornton Harris

  Academics have long understood Texas's heroic founding myths centered on the Alamo to be cover stories for the cause of slavery and white supremacy, but they've been tenacious parts of the state's culture. A new book joins the battle as state leaders dig in to defend those myths. 

• 
• 7/25/2021
  

  How Makeup and Rumor Affect Women in Power

  by Rae Nudson

  Appearance has been a double-edged sword for powerful women in history, enabling their achievements but also empowering their critics. 

• 
• 7/11/2021
  

  The Girders of Steel City's History

  by Ed Simon

  The author of a new book on Pittsburgh considers the first written history of the city and reflects on what preceded and what might follow the steel era. 

• 
• 7/4/2021
  

  Could Wilson have Ended the Great War Two Years Earlier? Zelikow's "Road Less Traveled" Reviewed

  by James Thornton Harris

  Philip Zelikow's book is a provocative and contrarian argument that Woodrow Wilson missed a chance to end the first world war in 1916. 

• 
• 6/27/2021
  

  Ambitious for War: How German-Soviet Collaboration Set the Course for WWII

  by Ian Ona Johnson

  After the Treaty of Versailles and the Bolshevik Revolution, Germany and the Soviet Union forged a partnership of pariah governments to industrialize and arm their nations, and making inevitable the slaughter that unfolded in the eastern front of the second world war.

• 
• 6/20/2021
  

  Recovering the Stories of Pioneering Frenchwomen of Science

  by Nina Gelbart

  The stories of six French women of science show that women have been part of the scientific revolution from the beginning, and that moving toward gender parity in professional science is imperative.

• 
• 6/20/2021
  

  Liberty, Freedom, and Whiteness: Reviewing Tyler Stovall's "White Freedom"

  by Alan J. Singer

  Tyler Stovall's book is a searching examination of the historical connections between a developing white identity, the Enlightenment concepts of liberty, and the political practice of racial hierarchy. 

• 
• 6/20/2021
  

  "Juke": Bluesman Bobby Rush on the Roots of Rock and Roll

  by Bobby Rush with Herb Powell

  Blues musician Bobby Rush's new autobiography chronicles his life and career, and the way that the appropriation of Black music into American popular culture often left Black entertainers behind. Read here how he remembers the roots of rock and roll. 

• 
• 6/6/2021
  

  The Legacy of Same-Sex Love in Ancient Thebes

  by James Romm

  The story of the Sacred Band of Thebes – a fighting force of pairs of male lovers – was discovered in time to provide inspiration to gay rights struggles from the Victorian era to the present. James Romm's new book tells the story. 

• 
• 5/30/2021
  

  Review: Lesley Blume's “Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World”

  by Lawrence Wittner

  Journalist Lesley Blume's book "Fallout" ably tells the story about how John Hersey and the New Yorker navigated government censorship and political opposition to publish Hersey's "Hiroshima," a foundational work in later movements to prevent nuclear war.