Social Media News: What People Are Talking About This week ... David Greenberg, Simon Schama, Rick Perlstein, Michael Beschloss and more.

Pop Culture Roundup: This Week Stonewall, the Imitation Game, and Robert Redford's new movie about Dan Rather's report on George W. Bush's military record.

Donald Trump is wrong: Mideast wouldn’t be more Stable under Saddam & other Dictators by Juan Cole The mistake Mr. Trump is making is to think ahistorically, that is, to think as though societies do not change dramatically over time.

When did polls became important tour understanding of American religion? by Robert Wuthnow (Interview) It was in 1976 when pollsters suddenly discovered the evangelical vote.

Are Transatlantic Slave Trade Reparations Due? A NYT panel is convened to answer the question posed to David Cameron last week.

Medicare's Civil Rights Roots by Vanessa Burrows and Barbara Berney Thanks to black doctors and activists, Medicare transformed and equalized U.S. health care.

No, Carly Fiorina, a degree in medieval history doesn't qualify you to fight Isis by David M. Perry While the Middle Ages do in fact shape contemporary events all the time, Fiorina unfortunately almost always gets the lessons of history wrong.

The Messiest Speakership Battle in History by Josh Zeitz 160 years ago, a similarly fractured GOP took months to settle on a speaker.

Donald Trump and the “F-Word” by Rick Perlstein An unsettling symbiosis between man and mob

Sean Wilentz is wrong about the Constitution and slavery by Patrick Rael According to Sean Wilentz’s opinion piece in the September 16 New York Times, the Constitution of 1787 did not make slavery a national institution. Wilentz badly misinterprets the antislavery sentiment evident at the constitutional convention of 1787.