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The Roundup Top Ten for June 18, 2021

As Immigration Politics Changed, So Did "In the Heights"

by A. K. Sandoval-Strausz

The film release of Lin-Manuel Miranda's "In the Heights" reflects the way the show has evolved in response to the shifting politics of immigration and nativism in the United States. 

In Vietnam, the Pentagon Papers Are History Written by the Defeated

by Lien-Hang Nguyen

A Vietnamese historian explains how the Pentagon Papers have become a foundation of domestic histories of war (both before and during US involvement) even as the Vietnamese government has declined to release its own official histories of the conflict. 

Our Insurance Dystopia

by Caley Horan

America's health insurance morass is a result of the replacement of the ideal of mutual, universal risk sharing with the privatization of risk in pursuit of profit. 

Inhumane System of Incarceration in U.S. Poses Special Danger to Women

by Jessica L. Adler

When politicians close single prisons after complaints of abuse, they leave untouched a cruel and dehumanizing system that poses particular risk to women. 

The Story of January 6 Will be Told

by Julian Zelizer

Republican obstructionism makes it likely that the full story of the January 6 attack on the Capitol and the election certification will be told in popular culture. 

How Deep Is America’s Reckoning with Racism?

by Kerri Greenidge

"Juneteenth has gained recent popular attention after white Americans responded to last summer’s mass protest movement in the most American way possible—through token gestures of “historical reckoning” rather than actual atonement through, say, restoration of Section 4b of the 1965 Voting Rights Act."

History as End: 1619, 1776, and the Politics of the Past

by Matthew Karp

"Current American inequalities, many liberals insist, must be addressed through encounters with the past. Programs of reform or redistribution, no matter how ambitious, can hope to succeed only after the country undergoes a profound “reckoning”—to use the key word of the day—with centuries of racial oppression."

We've Been Telling the Alamo Story Wrong for Nearly 200 Years. Let's Correct the Record

by Bryan Burrough and Jason Stanford

"Imagine if the U.S. were to open interior Alaska for colonization and, for whatever reason, thousands of Canadian settlers poured in, establishing their own towns, hockey rinks and Tim Hortons stores."

To Find the History of African American Women, Look to Their Handiwork

by Tiya Miles

"To discover the past lives of those for whom the historical record is abysmally thin, I’ve found that we must expand the materials we use as sources of information."

America’s ‘Great Chief Justice’ Was an Unrepentant Slaveholder

by Paul Finkelman

John Marshall's previous biographers have glossed over the extent of his slaveholding and his enthusiasm for the institution. Reappraisal of his legacy is entirely appropriate in light of new discoveries.