Books 
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5/8/2022
Confronting the Erasure of Native Americans in Early American Towns and Cities
by Edward Rafferty
Colin Calloway's book explores the presence of Native Americans in early American towns and cities, demolishing the longstanding myth that they vanished with the wilderness and highlighting indigenous critiques of the settler society.
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4/17/2022
Bringing Queer History to the Public (Excerpt)
by Marc Stein
The author of a new book of essays on writing queer public history recalls how he developed a voice for writing to the broader public – including by writing for HNN.
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4/10/2022
Excerpt: A Late-Life Friend Shares Rosa Parks's Memory of Her (Widely Misunderstood) Refusal to Move
by H.H. Leonards
H.H. Leonards was asked in 1994 to host an elderly woman she didn't know, and didn't at first recognize as a civil rights pioneer. This spring she is publishing the lessons she learned from an unlikely friendship with Rosa Parks.
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2/27/2022
Excerpt: George Brown and Firestone's Liberian Empire of Rubber
by Gregg Mitman
The African American intellectual George Brown confronts the brutality of Firestone's rubber plantation empire in Liberia in an excerpt from a new history of the company.
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2/27/2022
Irwin Gellman Asks: Did JFK Steal Victory in the "Campaign of the Century"?
by Justin P. Coffey
Irwin Gellman's latest volume in his political history of Nixon argues the 1960 election returns in Illinois and Texas were rigged for Kennedy. A reviewer finds the case is intriguing but falls short of solid proof, though it does resonate with charges of stolen elections and media favoritism that are all too familiar today.
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2/27/2022
Bridget the Grocer and the First American Kennedys
by Neal Thompson
The history of the Irish immigrant Kennedys has long focused on its prominent men. A new book looks to JFK's grandmother Bridget Murphy Kennedy as the foundation of the family and a neglected figure for understanding immigration, urban life, and the changing of American politics.
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2/20/2022
Martin Indyk Writes the Palestinians Out of the History of Kissinger's Middle East Diplomacy
by James R. Stocker
Martin Indyk’s new work offers a vivid portrait of the former Secretary of State’s Arab-Israeli diplomacy, but he completely misses one of the most important parts of this policy – the Palestinians.
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1/23/2022
Peter Richardson on Hunter S. Thompson and the Long Shadow of the Counterculture
by Aaron J. Leonard
"His historical significance, I think, lies in his willingness to challenge the nation’s political class, including the leaders of both major parties. He didn’t do that in established journals of opinion."
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1/23/2022
The Art of Swimming (Excerpt)
by Bill Hayes
Unline many recognizable modern sports, for most of human history swimming was treated as a utilitarian activity (and occasionally as a pleasure), unsuited for competition or spectatorship.
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1/16/2022
Can a New Labor Movement Grow and Win with Direct Action Instead of Collective Bargaining?
by Lawrence Wittner
"In this time of growing corporate domination of the United States and of the world, William E. Scheuerman's A New American Labor Movement illuminates a useful path forward in the long and difficult struggle for workers’ rights."
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11/21/2021
Perlstein's "Reaganland" Sheds New Light on a Familiar Story
by Ron Steinman
Rick Perlstein's "Reaganland" captures details of the 1980 campaign that weren't obvious even to political journalists covering Reagan's ultimately successful mission to take the conservative movement to the White House.
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11/14/2021
What "Forget the Alamo" Forgets
by James W. Russell
"Forget the Alamo" is ultimately constrained by American unwillingness to fully deal with the reality that the US forcibly stole Texas and the southwest from Mexico.
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11/7/2021
Tom Standage on his Brief History of Motion
by James Thornton Harris
Author Tom Standage discusses his history of personal transportation, the future of private automobile ownership, and the power of technology as a driver of history.
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10/17/2021
"The Essential Kerner Commission Report" Links Past and Present, but Abridges the Committee's Process
by James Thornton Harris
The Kerner Commission shocked Lyndon Johnson and much of white America by insisting that "the Negro problem" was in fact a problem of pervasive white racism. Two books are essential reading for understanding the commission's work and it's unmet demands.
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9/26/2021
The Border and the Contingent Status of Mexican Workers
by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
In this excerpt from her new book "Not 'A Nation of Immigrants'," Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz argues that the politics of the border and the racialization of Mexican laborers has been a longstanding and glaring exception to the American myth of welcoming immigrants.
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9/5/2021
Review: Heroes of Ireland's Great Hunger
by 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.
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9/5/2021
The Scandalous Six Week Walk That Inspired D. H. Lawrence's Most Popular Novels (excerpt)
by 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.
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9/5/2021
Lafayette as "The Nation’s Guest" (1824-1825)
by 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."
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8/15/2021
Children Versus Cars: The First Road Safety Campaigns (Excerpt)
by Tom Sandage
As outrage over road deaths gave way to laws clarifying expected behavior by street users, pedestrians surrendered much of their free access to the street to drivers.
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8/8/2021
Recessional: The WASP and God (excerpt)
by Michael Knox Beran
"We may enjoy the poetry of the fair sheepfold without believing in the shepherd himself. But when we come to the achievement of the WASPs, their public service, their standards of conduct, their faith in the possibility of regeneration, we find that it owed a good deal to their conviction that there is a shepherd."
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