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History News Network

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Roundup Top 10!


Why Obama underestimated ISIL in Syria and Iraq

by Juan Cole

"Obama gets it right that ISIL is a political problem, not primarily a military one. But he gets it wrong that it is rooted in primordial identity politics."


Practice of beheading not limited to Islamic State

by Jonathan Zimmerman

Beheading is as old as human civilization itself.


Keeping the White House Open

by Jeff Shesol

The White House has fortified itself by degrees. Fences grew higher and more imposing, gates were closed, windows were filled with bulletproof glass, walls were reinforced, security checkpoints were installed.


From Robespierre to ISIS

by Gertrude Himmelfarb

Edmund Burke’s war on terror—and ours.


The war on high-school history classes is a whole new level of dumb

by Jeb Lund

Colorado’s school board and the American conservative movement in general are trying to pretend history never happened.


The Wilderness Act Turns 50

by William deBuys

Celebrating the Great Laws of 1964


Hirohito: String Puller, Not Puppet

by Herbert P. Bix

The Japanese government’s new biography perpetuates the false but persistent myth of a benign, passive figurehead.


What Bill O’Reilly ignored about George Patton

by Richard Cohen

"How O’Reilly could have written 335 pages on Patton and not have mentioned his repellentanti-Semitism and its impact on the DPs is beyond me."


The Instrumentalisation of History

by Dr Huw J Davies

In reality, history can be misleading, its so-called ‘lessons’ proving counter-productive if their context is not properly understood.


How Not To Understand ISIS

by Alireza Doostdar

Sensationalist accounts of “shari‘a justice” notwithstanding, we do not have much information about how ISIS administers the lives of millions of people who reside in the territories it now controls.