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: Washington Post
1/5/2023
Although it was inspired by the battles over history encouraged by the Trump administration and the MAGA movement, a new book of essays on historical mythmaking actually shows that spinning the past to serve a present agenda is nothing new. For historians, the task isn't just fact-finding, but offering compelling interpretations.
Source: Smithsonian
1/10/2023
Galla Placidia was the only member of the imperial family who remained in Rome in 410 AD when the Visigoths approached the city. Her role in what happened next has been misrepresented or ignored by historians for centuries.
Source: Vanity Fair
1/10/2023
Is it reasonable for historians to "stick to the facts" and hope the truth will win out when political partisans are cherry-picking the past for justification of radical agendas in the present?
Source: The Atlantic
1/10/2023
Stephanie Coonts and Steven Mintz say that the shift in family bonds from obligation and resources to personal growth and happiness have exacerbated tensions and increased the level of estrangement in multigenerational families.
Source: New York Times
1/8/2023
Questions raised by a controversial op-ed by AHA President James Sweet inevitably hung over the annual meeting as scholars met amid political attacks from without and debates within the profession.
Source: Smithsonian
1/10/2023
Papers in the General Archive of the Indies in Sevilla, Spain, helped Robert Schwaller to challenge the established timeline and expand the geography of slave rebellion in the Americas.
Source: Slate
1/9/2023
by Paul M. Renfro and Matthew E. Stanley
The new "Myth America" offers insight into some recurrent myths about history from some excellent scholars, but it hews too closely to the idea that historical lies are a Trumpian phenomenon, rather than a broader aspect of the pursuit and consolidation of power for MAGA and New Democrats alike.
Source: Foreign Affairs
1/3/2023
by Frederik Logevall
George Kennan was instrumental in defining the doctrine of containment, but later objected to the bellicosity undertaken in its name. Key parts of his intellectual journey have remained obscure; a new book tries to examine them and draw lessons for foreign policy today.
Source: New York Review of Books
1/5/2023
by Josephine Quinn
Much remains unknown about the earliest development of written language; two new books make important contributions.
Source: Smithsonian
1/4/2023
"In January 1923, Rosewood was wiped off the map by a week of mob violence, then erased from history by people who didn’t want to talk about what had happened to the town’s primarily Black residents."
Source: The New Republic
12/28/2022
Labor historian Lane Windham describes a well-funded effort to encourage union members to opt out of paying dues, a strategy designed to force their unions to do more with less. Organizing to recruit new members and energize existing ones is the way to fight back.
Source: Washington Monthly
12/28/2022
by David Masciotra
As liberalism is under attack from the right and from a growing left, the author argues that recent biographies of Ted Kennedy illustrate the imperfections and trials of the idea, but show it's still the best option for organizing a free and fair society.
Source: WBUR
1/4/2023
Kerri Greenidge, Kellie Carter Jackson, and Michael Jeffries discuss the broader history of the big events of 2022 and how historical trajectories might continue or diverge in 2023.
Source: ProPublica
1/3/2023
Faculty, particularly those without tenure protections, are deciding that the vague terms and harsh penalties in the state's new law make the risk of teaching about racism too high.
Source: Wall Street Journal
1/2/2022
by Katrina Gulliver
Natalia Mehlman Petrzela's "Fit Nation" reviews the move of exercise from the fringe to the mainstream, while examining the ways fitness culture reflects social divisions in America.
Source: New York Times
12/31/2022
The statue in the author's birth city of Besançon has become a lightning rod for controversy after a restoration aimed at returning to the vision of Senegalese sculptor Ousmane Sow was seen as presenting the author as Black.
Source: Natchez Democrat
12/30/2022
Nelson wrote two books on "cold cases" linked to Klan activity in Louisiana and Mississippi.
Source: WNYC
1/3/2022
Editors Kevin Kruse and Julian Zelizer discuss the team effort by historians to attack persistent and consequential myths about the American past.
Source: Christian Science Monitor
12/19/2022
Historians of the Civil War era including Manisha Sinha and Joanne Freeman, suggest that the Jan. 6 Committee has assembled a documentary record of events that can support a definitive understanding of events. But what politicians and voters make of the information will determine what history is written.
Source: New York Times
12/19/2022
The compulsion to fit the past into a narrative about collective identity means that events like January 6 and the ugly truths about the scope and goals of the far right are likely to be consigned to the archives in a misguided attempt to "move on."
