This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream
media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously
biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in
each source note. Quotation marks are not used.
Source: WAMU
2/1/2023
Experts including education historians Adam Laats and Natalia Mehlman Petrzela discuss the controversy over Florida's rejection of the Advanced Placement course in African American Studies.
Source: The New Republic
1/31/2023
by Paul Renfro
Historian Paul Renfro reviews Kevin Cook's new book, which seeks to explain how the 1993 siege of the Branch Davidian cult's Waco compound became a totem for the right while also decrying the aggressive law enforcement tactics that escalated the situation toward mass death.
Source: Boston Review
2/1/2023
The College Board has made revisions to its pilot African American Studies course that appear to follow the criticisms made by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Here's a collection of essays by many of the scholars representing diverse Black intellectual traditions whose ideas will not be part of the course going forward.
Source: LitHub
Zachary Shore discusses the contrasting decisions to drop atomic bombs on Japan and rebuild Germany.
Source: Los Angeles Review of Books
1/21/2023
by Michael Meranze
Julia Schleck's work ties the idea of academic freedom to the social role of the university and its internal labor practices, which threatens scholars with attacks from inside and outside the campus.
Source: The Nation
1/31/2023
Tara Zahra's book places the conflicts of the middle of the 20th century in the context of profound global debates about how interconnected the world should be, and on whose terms.
Source: WTTW
1/27/2023
The Ohio State professor served as a consultant for the four hour documentary produced by Public Enemy's Chuck D, which begins January 31.
Source: Jacobin
1/28/2023
"Gilmore sets a timeline, critiques some striking artworks, and leaves the reader wondering why hardly anyone writes about art this succinctly."
Source: Washington Post
1/24/2023
"The problem we have in the United States is that we use these myths as a way to diminish the humanity and the citizenship of large sectors of our population and to then craft policies based on myths."
Source: Substack
1/23/2023
by Amna Khalid and Jeffrey Aaron Snyder
Two historian podcasters evaluate the effort to politicize the history curriculum in Florida's K-12 schools and public colleges.
Source: Smithsonian
1/26/2023
by Karin Wulf
In contrast to the stock story of the "Age of Exploration," Indigenous Americans often traveled to Europe afte 1492. A new book looks to this history to examine the origins of a cosmopolitan world.
Source: The Nation
1/24/2023
by Kim Phillips-Fein
In an implicit response to Richard Hofstadter's finding of the continuity of a narrow "American Political Tradition," Timothy Shenk examines the ways that activists have occasionally disrupted the political order and convinced people to "take a leap into an unknown future."
Source: New York Review of Books
1/25/2023
by Linda Greenhouse
Three books offer illuminating and distressing insight on the eruption of Christian nationalism, a "deep story" in American cultural history that, when its adherents feel denied the power they expect, guides potentially violent vengeance.
Source: Los Angeles Times
1/17/2023
In the new "I Saw Death Coming," Williams describes a "shadow Confederacy" that refused to cede freedom or dignity to African Americans who often lived far from the reach of a federal government that was unreliably committed to their protection.
Source: New York Review of Books
1/22/2023
The novelist Gary Shteyngart, who emigrated from the USSR to the US as a child, reviews Sasha Senderovich's "How the Soviet Jew was Made," a work that gives short shrift to neither the "Soviet" nor "Jewish" sides of the question.
Source: National Library of Medicine
1/22/2023
NLM History Talks promote awareness and use of NLM and related historical collections for research, education, and public service in biomedicine, the social sciences, and the humanities.
Source: The Atlantic
1/23/2023
by John J. Lennon
"Leaving Rikers feels like a better chapter of your life is about to begin—even if that next chapter is a prison sentence."
Source: Modern Medieval
1/20/2023
Eleanor Janega joins Matthew Gabriele and David Perry to discuss the erasure of women in history and the recurrent disbelief about women doing public things today.
Source: Professor Buzzkill History Podcast
1/23/2023
"Dr. David Bell relates the long and strange history of the concept of “American Exceptionalism,” analyzing various interpretations of the phrase from the Puritan John Winthrop to President (and non-Puritan) Donald Trump."
Source: MSNBC
1/23/2023
Prof. Dunn discusses Florida's divisive concepts law and refusal to accept an AP course in African American Studies with MSNBC's Joy Ann Reid
