Making History Go Viral

Nice roundup by @rebeccaonion on this year's history threads at @slate.

Strong showing for Princeton History at the 2018 Threadys, with appearances by @BethLewWilliams @DavidAstinWalsh @DigitalHistory_ and me too. https://t.co/qUPKrUA8wd

— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) December 11, 2018

Every time major news broke this year, the best place to find historians’ perspectives on the latest Trump calumny or #MeToo revelation was on Twitter, where their carefully argued threads were going viral. I’m on record as being somewhat skeptical of Twitter as a format for writing popular history; historians’ recent perfection of the thread, which allows for a much more developed argument over a long, connected series of tweets, has proven me wrong. But is this new mode of public writing helping get history to more readers? And how much time do these little masterpieces take for their authors to create?

Here’s your Year in Notable Twitter History Threads, with commentary, when available, from those who wrote them.