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History News Network

History News Network puts current events into historical perspective. Subscribe to our newsletter for new perspectives on the ways history continues to resonate in the present. Explore our archive of thousands of original op-eds and curated stories from around the web. Join us to learn more about the past, now.

Roundup Top 10!


Pop Culture Roundup: This Week

This week ... world's largest painting, Orson Welles, Trumbo, Berlin, Ethel Rosenberg, and Jane Austen.


Social Media News: What Historians Are Talking About

Paris, Trump, Planned Parenthood, Israelis-Palestinians, and more.


Why the 2016 Election Will Be One of the Most Pivotal Moments of Our Time

by Sean Wilentz

Every four years the contending political parties describe the impending presidential election as a great historic event – and every once in a while it's true. As Wilentz explains, you can blame Nixon.


How the NRA is harming American Security

by Juan Cole

Mass Shootings as Serial Terrorism


History to the Rescue

by Drew Gilpin Faust

In a moving piece in the NY Review of Books Harvard’s Drew Gilpin Faust says that a knowledge of history can help Americans grapple with the legacy of racism.


Who is Right in Syria?

by Lawrence Davidson

Stability can only be assured by the reimposition of order by Damascus. The folks in Washington, Paris and Ankara might not like that, but they are not the ones facing a future of anarchy.


The Key to Henry Kissinger’s Success

by Graham Allison

The statesman understood something most diplomats don’t: history—and how to apply it.


Woodrow Wilson, Princeton, and the Complex Landscape of Race

by Martha A. Sandweiss

The debates over Wilson’s legacy ought to push us to initiate even broader conversations about the presence and power of the past in daily life.


Beyond ISIS

by Andrew J. Bacevich

The Folly of World War IV


Franklin D. Roosevelt's Pulpit

by Matthew Wills

FDR spoke directly to the American people using a language both he and they knew well.


Donald Trump May Not Be a Fascist, But He is Leading Us Merrily Down That Path

by David Neiwert

In some ways, it makes him more dangerous than if he were a fascist, because it disguises the swastika looming in the shadow of the flamboyant orange hair.


Hitler’s Plan to Kill Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill—at the Same Time

by David Brown

During World War II, heads of state were on high alert for assassination attempts.


Secret Spies: The Class of 1985

by Kristie Macrakis

They’re being let out into the cold after being locked up for 30 years.