Books

• 
• 1/22/2023
  

  The Pope at War: Pius XII and the Vatican's Secret Archives

  by James Thornton Harris

  David Kertzer's book argues that defenders of Pope Pius XII's actions during the Holocaust mistake his defense of the prerogatives of the Catholic Church for a defense of the victims of Nazi persecution and genocide. 

• 
• 1/22/2022
  

  "The Dawn of Everything" Stretches its Evidence, But Makes Bold Arguments about Human Social Life

  by Frank A. Palmeri

  David Graeber and David Wengrow seek to pull less hierarchical and more egalitarian and sustainable forms of settlement and social organization out of the frame of utopia and into the narrative of human history. To the extent they succeed, they show humanity today has the choice to organize ourselves for survival. 

• 
• 1/15/2023
  

  Martin Sherwin's "Gambling with Armageddon" Strips away the Myths of Nuclear Deterrence

  by Lawrence Wittner

  As Sherwin points out, “the real lesson of the Cuban missile crisis . . . is that nuclear armaments create the perils they are deployed to prevent, but are of little use in resolving them.”

• 
• 12/4/2022
  

  Rediscovering the Lost Midwest (Excerpt)

  by Jon K. Lauck

  The contemporary troubles of the Midwest shouldn't blind historians and readers to the region's important history as an incubator of a democratic culture. 

• 
• 11/20/2022
  

  James M. Scott's "Black Snow" Traces the Line from Tokyo to Hiroshima

  by James Thornton Harris

  "LeMay’s operation really served as an important trial balloon to see how the American public would respond to the mass killing of enemy civilians.... To the surprise of many in Washington, however, the American public voiced no real objection."

• 
• 11/6/2022
  

  Lindsey Fitzharris on the Pioneering Facial Reconstruction Surgeon Who Remade the Faces of Great War Veterans

  by James Thornton Harris

  As one battlefield nurse wrote home, “the science of healing stood baffled before the science of destroying.” Dr. Harold Gillies let the effort to catch up, arguably the only lasting "victory" of the Great War. 

• 
• 10/23/2022
  

  Isaac Sears and the Roots of America in New York

  by Sam Roberts

  The career of merchant and patriot Isaac Sears highlights the underappreciated role of New York City in the movement for American independence. 

• 
• 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.