With support from the University of Richmond

History News Network

History News Network puts current events into historical perspective. Subscribe to our newsletter for new perspectives on the ways history continues to resonate in the present. Explore our archive of thousands of original op-eds and curated stories from around the web. Join us to learn more about the past, now.

Roundup Top 10!


What Ted Cruz Doesn’t Know About Ronald Reagan

by John Nichols

Reagan was a liberal Democrat who decried wrongheaded Republicans before he became the conservative hero of wrongheaded Republicans.


Fear of a foreign-born president made sense in 1787 – not today

by Jonathan Zimmerman

Why do you have to be a natural-born citizen in order to lead the country?


So Hillary believes in the discredited Southern Lost Cause theory? Ridiculous.

by Harold Holzer and Norton Garfinkle

Her remark that had Lincoln lived the horrors of post-war Reconstruction might have been mitigated doesn't make her an enemy of Reconstruction.


Five myths about Reconstruction

by James W. Loewen

The United States is entering the sesquicentennial of Reconstruction, that period after the Civil War when African Americans briefly enjoyed full civil and political rights. Here are five common fallacies that Americans still tell themselves about this formative period.


Reagan as History

by Kiron K. Skinner

Can any one biography do justice to the life and accomplishments of America’s fortieth President?


Tahrir 5 Years Later

by Juan Cole

The Hurdles to Democratization & Arab Youth Revolts


The Jew Who Silenced America’s Earliest Anti-Semites

by Gil Troy

Americans besieged by today’s hateful rhetoric would be wise to look up Jacob Henry, whose seminal defense of his own faith—and others’—was once memorized by schoolchildren everywhere.


America May Have Forgotten Schwarzenegger 2003, but Donald Trump 2016 Has Not

by Kaleb Horton

Though we’ve largely disregarded that time the nation’s most populous state elected a former action hero to its governor’s mansion, The Donald’s campaign for the White House is giving us a refresher.


The secular front in the US

by John Fea

For evangelicals, the secular progressive vision of the world is a threat to the institutions that they hold dear.


Ted Cruz has a very real birther problem: The law is not settled — but the history is

by Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg

The founders did restrict the presidency to natural-born citizens. Ted Cruz's status is deeply complicated.