Social Media News: What Historians Are Talking About This week ... Jelani Cobb, Simon Schama, Tim Naftali, Peniel Joseph.

Pop Culture Roundup: This Week This week ... Alice in Wonderland, Disney, Hamilton, Maya Angelou.

George Will’s had enough lying: His battle with Bill O’Reilly is finally an intellectual battle to reclaim the GOP from Fox News by Heather Cox Richardson "Killing Reagan" battle is really for the soul of the GOP. Too bad both sides are grifters and hacks

How England's Worst King Spawned Capitalism by Simon Constable Henry VIII’s decision to dissolve hundreds of monasteries was a revolutionary act by a monarch spouting the need for monastic reform. What this despot with outsize appetites could not have foreseen is that by selling off the monks’ land, he opened it to market forces.

Debate: Be it resolved humankind’s best days lie ahead... Steven Pinker debates Malcolm Gladwell.

When the Pope Ordered the Death of Adolf Hitler by David Brown Pope Pius XII resolved to do whatever he could to have Hitler killed.

The Origin of “In God We Trust” by Thomas Kidd The national motto “In God We Trust” has a complicated and contested history.

In the Early 1900s, Robber Barons Bought Dozens of Centuries-Old European Buildings. Where is Medieval America Now? by Brianna Nofil and Jake Purcell They lie scattered around the country, a hidden patchwork of mostly-illegal monasteries and mansions whose history has been largely forgotten.

Stonewall and the Politics of Memory by Timothy Stewart-Winter Roland Emmerich’s deeply flawed movie Stonewall.

The Continuing What-Ifs of Reconstruction by Brooks D. Simpson A critique of Gordon-Reed’s essay in the Atlantic on the failed hopes of Reconstruction.

Politics and the New Machine by Jill Lepore What the turn from polls to data science means for democracy.

The American Example Few Follow by Max Boot In short, Obama’s decision on Keystone was driven by the hoary old theory that the U.S. needs to model good behavior for other countries in the hope that they will emulate what we do.

Kissinger, the Bombardier by Greg Grandin How Diplomacy by Air Power Became an All-American Tradition