What the Lincoln-Douglas Debates Can Teach Presidential Contenders
By Georgiann Baldino
The Latest 
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An Act Of Betrayal And Infamy
Alon Ben-Meir
To think that the President would sell America’s interests and abandon its allies for the sake of personal financial gain is not merely outrageous but criminal.
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The Internet at 50: Four Steps in Transforming the Digital World
Harlan Lebo
The internet may have been “born” in October 1969, but it then percolated for years as complex, near-impenetrable masses of data stored in computers around the world. Online technology would evolve for more than two decades before it would become practical for everyone to use.
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Blog
Breaking Down Republican Lawmakers' Defenses of Trump
Steve Hochstadt
Only a very few Republican Senators have taken the evidence we all have seen seriously.
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Love in Post World War II Paris
Bruce Chadwick
An American in Paris is a complicated story of a man who loves a woman.
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Over the Rainbow to Oz Once Again with Judy
Bruce Chadwick
The story of the film classic is told in a bright, cheerful new musical, Chasing Rainbows, the Road to Oz, that opened last week at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, New Jersey,
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Blog
Should We Care About Presidential Age?
Ronald L. Feinman
Age seems even more important after Sanders suffered a heart attack earlier this month.
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The Founders’ Furious Impeachment Debate--and Benjamin Franklin’s Modest Proposal
Harlow Giles Unger
“This Magistrate is not the king! The people are the king!”
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Rethinking Polygamy: An Interview with Sarah M.S. Pearsall
Kyla Sommers
"Polygamy controversies place us amid major events in early America because such clashes were about the organization and governance not just of house- holds but of societies, nations, and empires.”
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The Original War on Terror
Eric Laursen
A review of Nunzio Pernicone and Fraser M. Ottanelli, Assassins against the Old Order: Italian Anarchist Violence in Fin de Siècle Europe.
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The Moral Compass of America’s Most Distinguished Soldier and Statesman
James Thornton Harris
George Marshall’s honesty and modesty were a key to his success.
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International Resistance in World War 2 Europe
Olivier Wieviorka
While national histories of wartime resistance are plentiful, the European dimension of the shadow army has rarely been taken into account.
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RetroReport is Building a Living Library of Modern News Events
Learn about RetroReport on PBS with this interview with executive producer Kyra Darnton.
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Author Christian Di Spigna Is On a Mission to Honor a Revolutionary War Hero
Michael McQuillan
A review of Founding Martyr: The Life and Death of Dr. Joseph Warren, the American Revolution’s Lost Hero.
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Trump and A History of Presidential Anti-Semitism
Donne Levy
As with so many Trump blunders, he is apparently ignorant of the history and nature of anti-Semitism in America.
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The United States is Not a Healthy Democracy: An Interview with Richard C. Lyons
Andrew Fletcher and Jonathan Montano
"Power is aggregating away from the people’s representative assemblies of house and senate and into the executive branches myriad agencies and into the judicial branch."
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The History Briefing On This Week's Impeachment Updates: How Historians Helped Us Understand the News
Paige Morse
Historians play a key role in contextualizing current events for the public.
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The History Briefing on Pregnancy Discrimination: What Historians Had to Say About This Week’s News
Isabella DelPino
How historians discussed pregnancy discrimination this week.
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Blog
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The History Briefing on Whistleblowers: How Historians Covered Breaking News
Sam Mastrianni
How historians helped us understand whistleblowers the past week.
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Roundup Top 10!
This week's broad sampling of opinion pieces found on the Internet, as selected by the editor of HNN.
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Blog
The Impeachment Inquiry Reveals Trump's Narcissism and Republican's Compliance
Steve Hochstadt
Unless more Republicans than the few so far show that they believe that he is a menace to our country, the impeachment inquiry will have little effect on the 2020 election. And that is the vote tha...
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A Brooding, Psychotic New Joker Joins the Batman Legend
Bruce Chadwick
Bruce Chadwick examines the history of the character of the Joker and reviews the latest film.
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A Chilling Play Grapples With How We Are All Connected to Slavery
Bruce Chadwick
Can you shake off American history?
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How Ideologues and Partisans Seized the Court: From Nixon to Trump
Thom Hartmann
When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal. —Richard M. Nixon
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Evil in the Delta: Elaine, Arkansas, 1919
Michael K. Honey
One hundred years ago, in the “Red Summer” of 1919, rampaging whites killed hundreds and perhaps thousands of African Americans in pogroms and race riots.
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Why Are Americans So Confused About the Meaning of “Democratic Socialism”?
Lawrence Wittner
Despite Sanders’ personal popularity and the popularity of the programs he advocates, large numbers of Americans―especially from older generations―remain uneasy about “socialism.”
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The New McCarthyism?
Andrew Feffer
Unfortunately, the term has become almost entirely evacuated of its historical and political meaning. Historians need to set the record straight.
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Holly Jackson on the History Lessons of American Radicals
HNN Staff
"As we grapple with the deep roots and long aftermath of colonialism, slavery, capitalist exploitation, it’s important to know that there was always profound opposition to those forces as well."
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Why Can’t Trump Admit Mistakes? It’s an Old Strategy Explained by Hitler
Cody Cain
When maintaining a falsehood, even a slight crack can bring it all crashing down.
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Incognegro: How Law Enforcement Spies on Black Radical Groups
L.E.J. Rachell
From COINTELPRO to Black Lives Matter.
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On Weather and History
M. Andrew Holowchak
Thomas Jefferson’s Climate-Induced “Philosophical Hangover” Explained.
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Revolutionary Inspiration for Moral Choices in Trump's America
T.H. Breen
Revolutionaries upheld the rule of law and decided that patriotism could best be expressed by preserving the fundamental principles of habeas corpus and due process.
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The Middle East: Must We Fight Forever?
Harlow Giles Unger
Almost 235 years have elapsed since John Adams warned against America’s first military involvement in the Arab world. The United States today seems well on the way to fulfilling Adams’s prophecy that we will “fight them forever.”
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The Nazi Census and a Quiet Hero
Dwight Harshbarger
The census and discrimination from Nazi Germany to today.
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Blog
The Challenge of the Democratic Primary
Ronald L. Feinman
Trying to determine a tenable strategy for 2020 is a crucial project that requires creativity and decisiveness.
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What Abraham Lincoln Got Right About Addiction
Ed Simon
This National Recovery Month, Ed Simon examines the history of addiction recovery movements.
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We Don’t Know What We Are Doing
Steve Hochstadt
Now is the tipping point. And we don’t know what we are doing.
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In The Great Society, We Get a Marvelous, If Painful, Look at LBJ and the War that Won’t Go Away
Bruce Chadwick
This powerful play is a painful reminder of history lost, of all those brave Americans who fought so gallantly for their country in that war, and came home battered and defeated.
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Is The Ukraine Scandal the Smoking Gun?
James D. Robenalt
Could this be the moment of clarity that will finally bring down President Trump?
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“The System Worked!” Watergate’s Lesson in an Age of Trump
Michael A. Genovese
A nation of laws depends upon the people to enliven the law. A dedicated citizenry is the only hope against tyranny.
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Myth vs History: A Study of Vietnam War Stories and Journalism
Jerry Lembcke
Australia’s Vietnam by Mark Dapin is important for the rectification it brings to public memory of Vietnam War homecomings.
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The Sexual Assault and Exploitation of Enslaved Men in America
Thomas A. Foster
Sexual assault of enslaved men occurred systematically and in a wide variety of forms.
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Climate Change: A Worldwide Catastrophe In The Making
Alon Ben-Meir
The United Nations Climate Action Summit revealed how far presidents and prime ministers are willing to go avoid the terrible consequences of global warming.
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Blog
The Demise of the Republican Party
Ronald L. Feinman
While the Republican Party might still exist in name, it has lost all principle, all purpose, and all reason to exist under its...
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Betrayal in Berlin: Soviet Disinformation and the Berlin Crisis
Steve Vogel
While Russian bots and fake Facebook accounts are relatively new, efforts to undercut Western values and democracy and sow division among allies have long been part of the playbook for Russian and Soviet intelligence.
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The Value of the USA's Founding Values in a Time of Political Turmoil
Andrew Fletcher
An interview with Roger Fortin, the author of How the Ideals of America’s Founders Lead Us to Purposeful Living.
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Blog
How Global Elites Can Address Misinformation
Intentional Insights
“Fragmented Realities - Regaining a Common Understanding of Truth.”
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Impeachment—a Tool to Prevent War?
Paul W. Lovinger
We should only impeach the President if he starts a new war or uses a nuke.
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The History Briefing on Impeachment: How Historians Covered this Week's Top Story
Jonathan Montano
A recap of historical perspectives on the current impeachment inquiry.
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What Does History Tell Us About Impeachment and Presidential Scandal? Here's 7 Historians' Analysis.
Kyla Sommers
Featuring historians Andrew Hartman, Jennifer Mercieca, Eladio B. Bobadilla, David Walsh, Varsha Venkat, Derek Litvak, and Rick Shenkman.
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Roundup Top 10!
This week's broad sampling of opinion pieces found on the Internet, as selected by the editor of HNN.
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What To Know About the History of Emoluments and Impeachment
Harlow Giles Unger
If, as charged by some in Congress, President Trump did in fact receive emoluments, he would only have adhered to an all-but-hallowed American tradition that dates back to the nation’s origins—and even earlier.
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Nancy Pelosi Announces Formal Impeachment Inquiry: Here's How Historians Are Responding
What historians are saying, tweeting and retweeting.
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"A Republic, If We Can Keep It:" What Historians Want You to Know About Impeachment
Historians help contextualize today's announcement of an impeachment inquiry.
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Trump Insists You Can't Trust the Press. He's Borrowing From Nixon's Playbook.
Steve Hochstadt
The history of why fewer and fewer people trust American insitutions.
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Playwright Stalks Caesar, Cleopatra, Ptolemy, the Roman Navy, Good Weather, Free Beer and Wacky History
Bruce Chadwick
It is a lot of fun, but nowhere near the true story. Cleo and Caesar did have a son and there were not a lot of storks flying about the Nile in those days.
News
- USA Today Publishes New Articles As Part Of Series, "1619: Searching for Answers"
- Washington doesn't have a Latino history museum. These people are hoping to change that
- A history of key United Auto Workers strikes against GM
- Fact-checking Andrew Yang on history of universal basic income
- Hobby Lobby Will Return Biblical Antiquities Allegedly Stolen by Oxford Professor
- Historians Allison Horrocks and Mary Mahoney bring history to life in podcast
- Modern art historian, US museum director and clergyman EA Carmean, Jr has died, age 74
- Historian Andrew David Teaching Impeachment during an Impeachment Inquiry
- Historian Brad Simpson Says He's Never Read a Letter As Unhinged As Trump's To Erdogan
- Academic Twitter's Gender Imbalance
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