Memo From Irish History: Welcome to Your Future, American Women
By Laura Weinstein
The Latest 
-
Untold Stories from the Largest Boat Lift in History
Jessica DuLong
On September 11, 2001, nearly half a million civilians in Lower Manhattan escaped by water when mariners conducted a spontaneous rescue. This was the largest waterborne evacuation in history, but has gone largely untold.
-
9/11's Memorials and the Politics of Historical Memory
Marita Sturken
Major 9/11 memorials try to fix the public memory on a moment of national unity that, 20 years later, seems illusory. Other memorials point the way to using the force of memory to encourage critical reflection on nationalism.
-
Scammed From the Beginning: Rejecting Expertise as an American Value
Guy Lancaster
When Americans demand and take unauthorized medications to treat COVID-19, they aren't indulging a new conspiratorialism but are tapping into currents of American cultural and religious history that have always rejected established authority.
-
The Specter of Emancipation and the Road to Revolution: A Rejoinder to Richard Brown et. al.
Woody Holton
Woody Holton responds to a recent open letter of criticism by six Revolutionary-era historians of his interpretation of the significance of slavery as a motivation for colonial independence.
-
Blog
The Attica Prison Uprising, 50 Years Ago Today
Skipped History with Ben Tumin
Season 3, Episode 1 of Skipped History
-
Teaching "All Men are Created Equal" (Part I)
Jeff Schneider
Teaching about the significance of racism and slavery to the founding means unpacking a tremendous number of tensions and contradictions in the first 80 words of the Declaration of Independence.
-
See a Piece of History: Retired FDNY Fireboat John D. McKean
The Fireboat McKean Preservation Project and the Hudson River Parks Friends offer those in New York the opportunity to visit the McKean at Pier 25 in lower Manhattan. The McKean's half-century of service most notably included evacuation and firefighting support on 9/11.
-
The Missed Lesson of Vietnam: Plan for Unconditional Victory or Don't Intervene at All
James D. Robenalt
Comparisons between American withdrawal from Vietnam and Afghanistan miss a key point: failure was overwhelmingly likely from the beginning because, if the United States was unwilling or unable to secure unconditional surrender, time was on the side of its foes.
-
The Roundup Top Ten for September 10, 2021
The top opinion writing by historians and about history from around the web this week.
-
Were the 9/11 Attacks Preventable?
J. Samuel Walker
It's impossible to know if more diligent preparation for potential Al Qaeda attacks could have prevented them, but the Bush administration's slowness to develop a national security strategy for terrorism will always haunt the nation and the world.
-
20 Years of Flawed Assumptions Led to Failure in Afghanistan
Luiza Carter
"For many Afghans with roots in a culture drastically different than ours, Taliban governance was simply not as barbaric as what we saw through our Western lens. Or at least not worth sacrificing their lives to prevent."
-
The Generosity of James Loewen
Guy Lancaster
James Loewen didn't put ideals of prestige over his "deadly earnest desire to find and expose manifestations of American racism that had, for so long, gone unnoticed and unexplored by most scholars." His generosity went hand in hand with his widespread impact.
-
Nationalist Nostalgia in Russian Film Mirrors Putin's Political Bending of History
Walter G. Moss
Director Nikita Mikhalkov expresses through film much of the same nostalgic nationalism that anchors Vladimir Putin's authoritiarian leadership in Russia.
-
Three Badasses of the Revolutionary Era That Your Textbooks Never Told You About
Woody Holton
University of South Carolina historian Woody Holton, author of Liberty is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution, due out in October, wants to introduce you to three badass American Revolutionaries your textbooks never told you about.
-
Lafayette as "The Nation’s Guest" (1824-1825)
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."
-
The Scandalous Six Week Walk That Inspired D. H. Lawrence's Most Popular Novels (excerpt)
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.
-
Review: Heroes of Ireland's Great Hunger
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.
-
Resettling Refugees is Harder than You Think – A Personal History
Ron Steinman
Experience shows that resettling refugees isn't easy. But with respect for common humanity and dedication, it's possible.
-
The Roundup Top Ten for September 3, 2021
HNN Staff
The top opinion writing by historians and about history from around the web this week.
-
Bigler's Gambit: How the California Gold Fields Gave Rise to Global Anti-Chinese Politics
Mae Ngai
The Chinese Question and Chinese exclusion policies that circumnavigated the Anglo-American world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries grew in local soils, and shifted and evolved as it crossed the Pacific world and supported the consolidation of British and American power over global emigration and trade."
-
Words of Warning: Many Opposed the Afghanistan Invasion in 2001
John Bodnar
"Today Americans worry over the humanitarian crisis at the Kabul airport. But they mostly forget the one that transpired over a period of two decades and led to the death of some 150,000 Afghans in a war to eliminate evil from the world."
-
New Discoveries Chip Away at Myths about Viking Shipbuilding
Nancy Marie Brown
Recent archaeological work, and field-testing of replica boats, is overturning the common image of the Viking warship.
-
Richard J. Evans on Fascism, Today's Right, and Historical Truth
Aaron J. Leonard
"Honest historians know they have to abandon their arguments when the evidence turns out to disprove them; dishonest historians and conspiracy theorists bend the evidence to fit the argument."
-
Critical Theory Opposes the Right Wing's Cancel Politics
Leah Allen and Pipa Marguerite
Before Critical Race Theory, the Frankfurt School of social criticism was a preferred target of the right. Ironically, it is the right that has been most agressively and systematically moving to "cancel" ideas it opposes, and the Frankfurt School that shows how to resist.
-
Climate, Peace, and Health Require International Solidarity. Is it Possible to Build It?
Lawrence Wittner
"Although there are no guarantees that social movements and enhanced global governance will transform our divided, problem-ridden world, they should provide us with at least a measure of hope that, someday, human solidarity will prevail."
-
The Truth About James Loewen
Ann Banks
HNN blogger Ann Banks writes that a small exchange typified the late James Loewen's insistence on telling the truth about history.
-
A Brief History of the "Isolationist" Strawman
Brandan P. Buck
As the United States enters another round of agonizing soul searching after another lost war, Americans should learn the fraught political history of the "isolationist" label.
-
Comparing Trump to Hitler is a Wrongheaded Distraction
Claudia Koonz
The comparison indulges liberal distaste for Trump, but it obscures the degree to which, absent any coherent policy of national rebuilding, Trumpism is hitched even more closely to racial nationalism than Nazism was.
-
Blog
The Politics of Fear and Vaccination
Steve Hochstadt
"Accepting the vaccine means rejecting their whole political orientation. It means realizing that the voices they have trusted, Republican leaders and conservative media heroes, have been lyin...
-
The Roundup Top Ten for August 26, 2021
The top opinion writing by historians and about history from around the web this week.
News
- Life After the Mines
- Journalist William Huie Concealed Lynchers In Emmett Till Case And Got Away With It
- Texas Allows Abortion to Save a Woman's Life. Right?
- Ken Burns's "Muhammad Ali" Well-Crafted, But Not Groundbreaking
- The History of the Debt Ceiling: How a Routine Procedure Became Routine Political Brinksmanship
Trending Now
