Books

• 
• 10/2/2022
  

  Dangerous Rhythms: Jazz and the Criminal Underworld

  by James Thornton Harris

  T.J. English examines the relationship between jazz and organized crime in Prohibition America, and how the music moved on from the mob. 

• 
• 9/11/2022
  

  Songs for Sale: Tin Pan Alley (Excerpt)

  by Bob Stanley

  American popular music didn't start with Elvis. It emerged when musical fads onstage converged with a new mass market for in-home record players to make song publishing big business. 

• 
• 9/11/2022
  

  Inflation Opened the Door to American Neoliberalism

  by Thom Hartmann

  An inflationary crisis proved to be the justification for reworking the American political economy in the direction of the vast inequality we observe today. 

• 
• 8/7/2022
  

  Healing a Divided Nation

  by Carole Adrienne

  From specialized trauma care to emergency transportation to board certification of physicians, when we encounter the medical system today, we are experiencing Civil War medicine. 

• 
• 7/31/2022
  

  Kathryn Olmsted's "Newspaper Axis" Shows Media Extremism Nothing New

  by Kathryn Smith

  FDR's success in promoting the New Deal and rallying Americans to the defense of Europe against fascism was a triumph over the nation's right-wing newspaper barons. 

• 
• 7/24/2022
  

  Learning About Stalin from His Books: An Interview with Geoffrey Roberts

  by Aaron J. Leonard

  Researchers who access Stalin's books will find the dictator's library a source of insight into his political thinking and engagement with ideas (and his pithy marginalia), but not a Rosetta Stone for understanding his capacity for atrocity. 

• 
• 7/8/2022
  

  The Story of the School that Defied Nazi Ideological Control

  by Deborah Cadbury

  Amid the intense politicization of education today, what can we learn from one remarkable story of a teacher's defiance of official ideological control? 

• 
• 7/3/2022
  

  Excerpt: INAUGURAL BALLERS: The True Story of the First U.S. Olympic Women’s Basketball Team

  by Andrew Maraniss

  “Win this game,” Billie Moore told her team, “and it will change women’s sports in this country for the next twenty-five years.”

• 
• 6/12/2022
  

  Excerpt: The Fires of Stavishche, 1919

  by Lisa Brahin

  Between 1917 and 1921, an estimated 100,000 to 250,000 Jews were murdered in pogroms across Ukraine. The author has worked to reconstruct this history, including her ancestors' escape from the town of Stavishche.

• 
• 5/29/2022
  

  A History of Art for Our Times

  by Charlotte Mullins

  The classic works of art history tell a story of great artists, overwhelmingly European and male. The author's new history refocuses the narrative on the diverse networks of creators through which art is made – networks crossing lines of geography and including women artists and artists of color. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  5/18/2022
  

  Historians Disagree with Alito: Roe Didn't Create Polarization

  by Adam Serwer

  The idea that the 1973 Roe decision created polarized politics around the Supreme Court ignores the decades-long backlash to Brown v. Board of Education and other decisions of the Warren Court and the contested politics of abortion before Roe. 

• 
• 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. 

• 
• 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. 

• 
• 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. 

• 
• 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. 

• 
• 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. 

• 
• 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.

• 
• 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.

• 
• 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."

• 
• 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.