Roundup: Talking About History

• 
• SOURCE: PsyBlog
  3-5-14
  

  Quirks of Memory Everyone Should Know

  by Jeremy Dean

  Why we remember and why we forget.

• 
• SOURCE: Johns Hopkins University Press Blog
  3-3-14
  

  Returning to Our Cruelest War

  by Michael C. C. Adams

  Why one of America's foremost Civil War historians is returning to the topic.

• 
• SOURCE: Time Magazine
  2-17-14
  

  When President Lincoln Wrote Catty Letters to the Editor

  by Matthew Pinsker

  New historical research has uncovered a cheekier side to our sixteenth president.

• 
• SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
  2-19-14
  

  Tales of an Indiscriminate Tool Adopter

  by Michelle Moravec

  How to do a twelve-week digital humanities on the cheap.

• 
• SOURCE: National Review
  2-18-14
  

  Lessons of World War I

  by Victor Davis Hanson

  Much of what we think we know is false; what really happened matters desperately to us today.

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  2-5-14
  

  Reviving Midwest History

  by Michael Dirda

  A new book by Jon Lauck argues for reconsidering the history of America's heartland.

• 
• SOURCE: National Review
  1-29-14
  

  Totalitarian Troubadour

  by John Fund

  We shouldn’t forget that Pete Seeger was Communism’s pied piper.

• 
• SOURCE: Al Jazeera America
  1-28-14
  

  In Defense of Pete Seeger, American Communist

  by Bhaskar Sunkara

  Like his party associates, Seeger was consistently on the right side of history.

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  1-29-14
  

  Pete Seeger's All-American Communism

  by David Graham

  The folksinger's romance with Stalinism remains disturbing, but it can't be separated from the rest of his work—nor from U.S. history.

• 
• SOURCE: Al Jazeera America
  1-18-14
  

  The Horrors "12 Years a Slave" Couldn't Tell

  by Adam Rothman

  What a Civil War soldier’€™s diary tells us about Solomon Northup’s ordeal.

• 
• SOURCE: PJ Media
  1-19-14
  

  Nelson Mandela Was A Committed Communist

  by Ronald Radosh

  South African journalist Rian Malan has new revelations about Mandela's relationship with the Communist Party.

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  1-20-14
  

  The Racially Fraught History of the American Beard

  by Sean Trainor

  “Washes and razors for foofoos," scoffed Walt Whitman. But the story of nineteenth-century facial hair is more tangled than modern nostalgists may realize. 

• 
• SOURCE: New-York Historical Society
  1-15-14
  

  Generations a Slave: Unlawful Bondage and Charles Carroll of Carrollton

  by Julita Braxton

  A half century before, in the courts of the neighboring Upper South state of Maryland, Charles Mahoney successfully challenged the legality of his enslavement.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  1-6-14
  

  New York Times Room for Debate: Turning Away From Painful Chapters

  What happens when we ignore ugly truths about the past -- when families bury their dark secrets, and nations try to forget their sins?

• 
• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  1-9-14
  

  Why Presidents Stopped Talking About Poverty

  by Jeff Shesol

  LBJ was the last president to talk about poverty in a substantive way.

• 
• SOURCE: Deutsche Welle
  1-9-14
  

  1914 All Over Again?

  by Susanne Spröer

  There are parallels between 1914 and 2014, but the differences are far more important.

• 
• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  1-6-14
  

  Facing 2014 with Trepidation

  by Adam Gopnik

  The last time '13 turned into '14, it didn't work out too well.

• 
• SOURCE: The New Republic
  12-26-13
  

  Ten Books Any Student of American History Must Read

  by John B. Judis

  These are the books that have influenced one writer's view of American history.

• 
• SOURCE: Huffington Post
  12-19-13
  

  On the 76th Anniversary of the Nanjing Massacre

  by Stephen D. Smith

  Sirens sound around this Chinese city as the last few eyewitnesses of a massacre gather.

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  12-12-13
  

  Insisting Jesus Was White Is Bad History and Bad Theology

  by Jonathan Merritt

  In trying to police his depiction, Megyn Kelly is wrong on both the facts and the essential universality of the Christian message.