On September 17, Donald Trump called for a commission to require the teaching of history to encourage patriotism and reject critical interpretations of the nation's past. Click here to view HNN's coverage of the topic, both original essays and reposted content from around the web. 

● Juneteenth celebrations unite community with parade, gatherings 

Every June 19 in Texas, communities celebrate with prayer, family gatherings and a strong dose of history. That was the day in 1865 that a union general arrived in Galveston with an order informing Texas that all slaves were freed.

● This Juneteenth Let’s Remember Stories Like This One

ANNA-LISA COX

It shows that slavery was not the only injustice affecting African Americans before the Civil War.

● It’s Time to Make Juneteenth a National Holiday

KARL JACOBY

This was the day – June 19, 1865 – in 1865 when slaves in Texas finally were freed.

● Juneteenth Is for Everyone

KENNETH C. DAVIS

150 years after its birth, Juneteenth remains largely unacknowledged on America’s national calendar. Many Americans are unaware of its existence, or its roots.

● When Dixie Put Slaves on the Money

● Why Andrew Jackson never should have been on the $20 to begin with By Matthew Rozsa

● Harriet Tubman just bumped Andrew Jackson from the $20 bill. Historian Eric Foner approves.

• Originally published 12/06/2013

  Nelson Mandela Was Truly One of History's Great Men

  A moral force in the world, Nelson Mandela sacrificed dearly for the values of freedom and social justice.

• Originally published 12/06/2013

  Mandela's Lasting Legacy: An Interview with Judith Byfield

  Cornell professor Judith Byfield on Nelson Mandela's passing.

• Originally published 12/06/2013

  Nelson Mandela was a Secular Saint for the Whole World

  Mandela was a rare example of a lion who lay down with the lambs.

• Originally published 12/06/2013

  The Character of Nelson Mandela

  Mandela belongs to the same pantheon of insurgents as George Washington, Michael Collins, and David Ben-Gurion.

• Originally published 12/06/2013

  The Surprising Republican Civil War That Erupted Over Nelson Mandela and Apartheid

  Ronald Reagan vetoed efforts to pass sanctions against apartheid South Africa.

• Originally published 12/06/2013

  Nelson Mandela Was Undeniably Great But He Doesn’t Need a Halo

  For a man imprisoned for his political beliefs, he had a weakness for those who did the very same thing to their ideological opponents.

• Originally published 12/06/2013

  Don’t Sanitize Nelson Mandela: He’s Honored Now, But Was Hated Then

  The ANC was a Soviet-backed, communist-influenced organization... and it still lead a movement for freedom.

• Originally published 12/06/2013

  How Mandela Changed African Politics

  His style of leadership, often overlooked, was a game-changer for the continent and black rule.

• Originally published 12/06/2013

  Fight the Right-Washing of Nelson Mandela’s Legacy

  Many conservatives supported the apartheid regime to the bitter end.

• Originally published 12/06/2013

  We Cold Warriors Were Wrong About Mandela

  We thought Nelson Mandela was just another Fidel Castro or a Pol Pot, but he was actually one of the century's great moral leaders.

• Originally published 12/06/2013

  Mandela Taught a Continent to Forgive

  How a revolutionary became a man of peace.

• Originally published 12/06/2013

  The Contradictions of Mandela

  He was avuncular, but disciplined, a disciple of Marx and Lenin but deeply traditionalist. He was above all a human being.

• Originally published 12/05/2013

  Nelson Mandela Dead: Icon of Anti-Apartheid Movement Dies at 95

  The former South African president had been hospitalized since June.

• Originally published 07/08/2013

  As Mandela lies dying, disputes over his legacy are taking hold

  JOHANNESBURG — The nasty family squabble over where three of former President Nelson Mandela’s children, and eventually the leader himself, will be buried drew to a close on Thursday morning in a small village on the Eastern Cape.But not before it had thrown into relief the perhaps inevitable disputes over the revered leader’s legacy — both the financial legacy, which his family is wrestling over, and more broadly, the political legacy of how Mr. Mandela will be remembered and how his story will guide the country he led.Mandla Mandela, the former president’s eldest grandson and heir as tribal leader in the region, held a news conference in his compound in Mvezo saying that he would cease his legal battles to have the bodies kept there. In 2011, he moved the bodies to Mvezo from another small village, Qunu, where the rest of the Mandela family wanted them and where the anti-apartheid leader is said to wish to be buried himself. By late afternoon, the bodies were reburied in Qunu....

• Originally published 07/08/2013

  Mandela: Inspiration for an era of activism

  LONDON — In the welter of passion and memory surrounding the decline of Nelson Mandela, a more modest commemoration slipped by a week ago that said much about the role he played as an inspiration in his long years of imprisonment, when the daily grind of struggle against apartheid fell to others who fought in his name.It was a reminder, too, that the battle to end white rule was fought on many levels, ranging from the activism of anti-apartheid exiles here in London to a brutal shadow war in South Africa itself that offered no quarter to those seeking a new order.The events of June 27, 1985, offered a particular insight.

• Originally published 07/08/2013

  Where Mandela Kept Hope, Guide Tells Their Shared Saga

  CAPE TOWN, South Africa — As Ahmed Kathrada led President Obama and his family recently through the prison on Robben Island where Mr. Kathrada had spent much of his life, he explained how the rules of apartheid had granted him, because of his Indian ancestry, long pants and socks. One of his fellow inmates, Nelson Mandela, as a black man, received short pants and no socks.Mr. Kathrada, 83, also showed the Obamas the sign listing the different amounts of sugar, coffee, soup and other foods that South Africa’s prison system had apportioned to blacks; mixed-race inmates, who were known as coloreds; Indians; and whites.“In everything there was apartheid,” he said in an interview on Thursday in his small apartment here in the shadow of Table Mountain....

• Originally published 06/24/2013

  Nelson Mandela in critical condition for second day

  JOHANNESBURG — President Jacob Zuma said on Monday that Nelson Mandela remained in critical condition for a second day in a hospital in Pretoria where he is being treated for a lung infection.“Doctors are doing everything possible to ensure his well-being and comfort,” Mr. Zuma said at a news conference in Johannesburg, but he gave few details about the condition of Mr. Mandela, who was hospitalized on June 8.Mr. Zuma spoke as South Africans and admirers around the world awaited word on the condition of Mr. Mandela, the iconic leader who played a towering role in his country’s transition from white minority rule under the system of apartheid to multiracial democracy in 1994....

• Originally published 04/01/2013

  Roy Robins: After Mandela

  Roy Robins is a writer based in Cape Town.CAPE TOWN, South Africa — Late on Wednesday night, March 27, former South African president Nelson Mandela was admitted to an undisclosed hospital for a recurring lung infection. This is the third time Mandela has been hospitalized in recent months. He spent a weekend in hospital in early March for what the government described as a "check-up," and most of December in hospital, where he was treated for a lung infection and had his gallstones removed. The last time Mandela was seen in public was almost three years ago, at the closing ceremony of the 2010 World Cup, in Johannesburg. But that doesn't mean that he's not still everywhere.

• Originally published 03/28/2013

  Nelson Mandela admitted to hospital

  Nelson Mandela has been admitted to hospital with a recurrence of a lung infection, the South African government said on Thursday.A statement said the 94-year-old anti-apartheid leader and former president was admitted shortly before midnight. It gave no further details other than to say he was receiving the "best possible expert medical treatment and comfort". Mandela has a history of lung problems dating back to when he contracted tuberculosis as a political prisoner....

• Originally published 02/22/2013

  Mandela family launches wine collection in Miami

  For decades, Nelson Mandela's name has been synonymous with political reform and the struggle against South African apartheid.Now with the launch of House of Mandela Wines, his daughter and granddaughter hope to add fine wine to the list of associations.It's a sign of just how far both the wine industry and the country have come since 1994, when apartheid was dismantled and Mandela was elected the nation's first black president...

News

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• Breaking News
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• Nelson Mandela Dead: Icon of Anti-Apartheid Movement Dies at 95
• George H.W. Bush Given Lyndon B. Johnson Foundation Award
• Bruce Springsteen's 'Born To Run' manuscript could fetch $100,000 at NY auction
• Hospital Donates Records of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis to JFK Library
• Australia’s Eureka Flag Finds a New Patch

• Michael Kammen, Historian of U.S. Psyche, Dies at 77
• Western Michigan University history professors ask Board of Trustees to investigate provost
• Faculty Praise, Remember Esteemed Cornell Historian Michael Kammen
• Where to now, Ukraine?
• Malta accused of Muslim history cover-up

150 Years After the Gettysburg Address, Is Government by the People in Trouble? by Drew Gilpen Faust

Has America fallen short of being the "world's best hope"?

NOVEMBER 17, 2013

Lee Harvey Oswald Inside the Soviet Union [INTERVIEW] by David Austin Walsh

Journalist Peter Savodnik discusses his new book, The Interloper.

NOVEMBER 22, 2013

Click HERE for our most recent articles.

Articles from the 2013 Shutdown:

How Will Historians Be Affected by the Government Shutdown? By David Austin Walsh Most federal agencies -- including archives and parks -- are closed. It just got a LOT harder to do history in the United States. HISTORIANS/HISTORY

The Worst Shutdown in Modern U.S. History by Ellen Fitzpatrick and Theda Skocpol Why? Because it undermines the democratic process. CNN

Tearful WWII veteran turned away from Ohio museum 88-year-old Joe McGrain was turned away from the U.S. Air Force museum. WALL STREET JOURNAL

Why The Right Fights by Ross Douthat Movement conservatives actually want smaller government. NEW YORK TIMES

Roots of current impasse go back to 1974 The Budget and Impoundment Control Act set up Congress for an October shutdown. NEW YORK TIMES

The Government Shutdown: Lincoln Said It Best The Economy Hub cites Abraham Lincoln as a source of inspiration to create peace in Congress. LOS ANGELES TIMES

The Shutdown Standoff Is One of the Worst Crises in American History by John B. Judis Welcome to Weimar America. THE NEW REPUBLIC

The Real Story of the Shutdown: 50 Years of GOP Race-Baiting by Joan Walsh Nixon's Southern strategy reaps its bitter fruit. SALON

Shutdown Fulfills GOP’s Confederate Fantasies by Steven Rosenfeld It's a way of acting out a deeply held secessionist dream. ALTERNET

The Right Gets Its ’60s by Bill Keller Obamacare is their Vietnam. NEW YORK TIMES

Lessons from the last government shutdown Lesson #1: the shutdown was NOT a political disaster for the Republican Party. PEW RESEARCH CENTER

Veterans break past World War II Memorial barricade The veterans are visiting Washington, D.C. as part of the Honor Flight Network. CNN

A government shutdown history lesson What to expect from here. ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION

The Winners and Losers of the U.S.-Russia Deal by Juan Cole

The Kerry-Lavrov agreement may be the inflection point when the U.S. stops being the sole superpower.

NEWS ABROAD

The Battle of Gettysburg marks its 150th anniversary this week (so does the Union victory at the siege of Vicksburg, but good luck seeing anything about that in the media).

To mark the occasion, we've assembled a list of resources -- digital collections, books, and news stories -- about the battle and the Civil War that are worth closer examination.

And of course, please share your favorite Civil War books in the comments! We're pretty well read here at HNN, but considering that the amount of works published on the Civil War easily numbers in the tens of thousands, we certainly haven't read (or even heard of) them all!

Digital Resources

Books Worth Reading

Histories of the Civil War Era

Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era by James M. McPherson (1988). Still the definitive single-volume history of the Civil War. More of a socio-political history than a military history, but absolutely essential reading for to understand the underpinning issues of the Civil War.

Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 by Eric Foner (1988). One of the most influential history books written in the past thirty years, Eric Foner transformed historical intepretations of the Civil War and Reconstruction by putting the agency of freed slaves at the center of his analysis.

Battle Histories

Glory Road by Bruce Catton (1952). Catton is in many ways the granddaddy of Civil War studies. In fact, if you're of a youthful cast, Catton was the one Civil War author your granddaddy probably read. Civil War studies, and historical scholarship in general, has come a long way since the 1950s, but for pure narrative history and lyrical beauty, Catton is still worth reading.

Gettysburg by Stephen W. Sears (2004). Sears stakes out firm positions in the perennial debates over the Gettysburg campaign (Did Lee make a mistake with the invasion? Was his judgment impaired when ordering Pickett's Charge? etc.), coming firmly down on the side of Lee by examining the larger strategic picture facing the Confederacy in 1863 (the looming loss of Vicksburg most prominently).

Gettysburg: The Last Invasion by Allen C. Guezlo (2013). Allen Guezlo offers the most recent narrative history of the battle, an hour-by-hour, ordinary-soldier's-eye-view of Gettysburg. He relies on postwar memoirs, regimental histories, and survivors' letters to provide a visceral, sensory experience of the fighting.

Regimental Histories

Last Full Measure: The Life and Death of the First Minnesota Volunteers by Richard Moe (1993). Widely considered to be one of the best regimental histories, former president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation Richard Moe traces in this volume, the history of the Firs Minnesota Volunteers, one of the first Union regiments mustered and which was decimated during the second day of the battle.

Stand Firm Ye Boys From Maine: The 20th Maine and the Gettysburg Campaign by Thomas A. Desjardin. The 20th Maine is famed for its defense of Little Round Top on the second day of the battle. Their ammunition exhausted, regimental commander Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain ordered a bayonet charge into the advancing Confederates. It worked. Little Round Top remained in Union hands for the rest of the battle.

A Scythe of Fire: A Civil War Story of the Eighth Georgia Infantry Regiment by Steven E. Woodworth and Warren Wilkinson. The Eighth Georgia Infantry served at nearly ever major battle fought by the Army of Northern Virginia. At Gettysburg, the regiment fought as part of Anderson's Brigade, where it saw heavy fighting in the Wheatfield on July 2S

Journal Articles

"A Census-Based Count of the Civil War Dead" by J. David Hacker (Civil War History, 2011). Perhaps the most important article to appear about the Civil War in the past decade. Using census records, demographer and social historian J. David Hacker revised the estimated number of deaths during the Civil War upward, from around 600,000 to nearly 850,000.

Reader's Picks

For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War by James M. McPherson (1997).

Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War by Drew Faust Gilpin (2004).

Copperheads: The Rise and Fall of Lincoln's Opponents in the North by Jennifer L. Weber (2006).

This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust (2008).

Sesquicentennial News

News

• Coursera contract with UT system released; history chair says no MOOCs at Knoxville this fall (6-3-13)
• Historians at MOOC partner schools say faculty not consulted (5-30-13)
• San Jose State professors fire back at online class offer (5-25-13)
• Profs get ready for tens of thousands of students in online courses (1-14-13)

Commentary

• Alex Sayf Cummings: Why MOOCs are Like the Music Industry (5-30-13)
• Claire B. Potter: Could Flipping the Curriculum Lead to More Jobs and Better Educated Students? (5-26-13)
• Jonathan Rees: Why Harvard Hates You (5-20-13)
• Michael S. Roth: My Global Philosophy Course (4-30-13)
• Susan Matt and Luke Fernandez: Before MOOCs, ‘Colleges of the Air’ (4-23-13)
• Jon Wiener: For-Profit Fiasco: California Public Colleges Turn to Web Courses (3-14-13)

Books

•  Jim Cullen: Review of Jeffrey Selingo's College (Un)Bound: The Future of Higher Education and What It Means for Students (5-26-13)

Related Links

• Jonathan Rees: More or Less Bunk [Clearinghouse for MOOC-critical blog posts and updates]

Click HERE for our most recent articles. 

Historian's Take

● Historian of terrorism worried about rise in militia groups (ABC News, 3-30-10)

● Gérard Chaliand: Why We Need a Cool Assessment of Terrorism (History News Network, 7-29-07)

● Walter Laqueur: Terrorism Won't Be Defeated in Our Lifetime (Wall Street Journal, 7-12-05)

Histories of Terrorism

● Jeffrey William Lewis: A Brief History of Suicide Bombing (History News Network, 3-25-13)

● Aziz Huq: Review of The History of Terrorism From Antiquity to Al Qaeda, ed., Gérald Chaliand and Arnaud Blin (History News Network, 12-29-07)

● J. Frederick Fausz: The First Act of Terrorism in English America (History News Network, 1-11-06)

Counter-Terrorism

● Fighting Terrorism, French-Style (New York Times, 3-31-12)

● Jill Lepore: Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and the Law of Torment (New Yorker, 3-18-13)

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Past Controversies: South of the Border

For the Prosecution:

• David Greenberg: Agit-Prof: Howard Zinn’s Influential Mutilations of American History (3-19-13)
• Jim Loewen: "The Other Civil War": Howard Zinn, Abraham Lincoln, Lerone Bennett, Stephen Spielberg, and Me (12-29-12)
• Sam Wineburg: Where Howard Zinn's "A People's History" Falls Short (12-17-12)
• Ron Radosh: Howard Zinn’s FBI Files: What It Reveals (8-5-10)
• Michael Kazin: Howard Zinn's Disappointing History of the United States (2-9-10)
• Rick Shenkman: The Left's Blind Spot (2-9-10)
• Howard Zinn's show has been "hyped" says Ron Radosh in a highly critical review (12-12-09)
• Larry DeWitt: Howard Zinn: The Historian as Don Quixote (1-25-09)
• Daniel J. Flynn: Howard Zinn's Biased History (1-9-03)

For the Defense:

• Jesse Lemisch, Staughton Lynd, and Robert Cohen: Rebutting David Greenberg's Broadside on Howard Zinn (3-19-13)
• Robert Cohen: When Assessing Zinn, Listen to the Voices of Teachers and Students (1-7-13)
• Peter N. Kirstein: The People's Historian and the FBI Zinn Files (8-17-10)
• Eric Foner: Howard Zinn's Critical History (2-4-10)

In memoriam

Howard Zinn: Tribues, Memorials, and Obituaries

• Guy Mount: Zinn Lives: Scholars Remember the Person Behind A People’s History (3-21-10)
• Joseph A. Palermo: Remembering Howard Zinn (2-9-10)
• Sheldon M. Stern: Howard Zinn Briefly Recalled (2-9-10)
• Ron Briley: Thank You, Howard Zinn (2-9-10)
• Michael Honey: Howard Zinn's Disputed Legacy (2-9-10)
• Staughton Lynd: The Howard Zinn I Remember (2-9-10)

News and Misc.

• Ron Briley: Review of Martin Duberman’s Howard Zinn: A Life on the Left (1-10-13)
• New biography of Howard Zinn published (12-8-12)
• John Tirman: Review of Martin Duberman's "Howard Zinn: A Life on the Left" (12-8-12)
• Zinn makes final list of "least credible history book in print" (7-16-12)
• Inside Howard Zinn's FBI Files (7-30-10)
• 'People's History' author Howard Zinn dies at 87 (1-27-10)
• Howard Zinn: On "The People Speak," the Supreme Court, and Haiti (1-26-10)
• Howard Zinn: Roasted in New Criterion (2-1-08)
• Howard Zinn: His publisher rides to his defense (6-24-07)
• Howard Zinn: BU's John Silber says he had grounds for firing Zinn (12-28-05)
• Tim Goodman: Howard Zinn: Rock Star (10-13-04)
• Howard Zinn, Q & A (February 2004)

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Commentary: Historians

Commentary: Media