Historians/History

• 
• 6/4/2023
  

  Recovering the Story of the Empress Messalina After a Roman Cancellation

  by Honor Cargill-Martin

  After the empress Valeria Messalina's fatal fall from favor with her husband Claudius, her name and image were stricken from public and private spheres, an episode that reveals the tightly-regulated dissemination of imperial women's images (and puts current "cancel culture" panic and whisper networks into perspective). 

• 
• 5/31/2023
  

  Ayn Rand's Defense of an Anti-Union Massacre

  by Greg Mitchell

  The screenwriter and novelist was inspired by the 1943 memoir of Republic Steel head Tom Girdler, in particular his refusal to apologize for collaborating with Chicago Police to crush a march of striking steelworkers and their families in 1937. 

• 
• 5/28/2023
  

  What We Can Learn From—and Through—Historical Fiction

  by Carol K. Kammen

  "I have written this to praise historical fiction when it respects the line between our times and the past, when it adheres to the known-truth and does not pervert it for excitement—or for book sales."

• 
• 5/21/2023
  

  From "Shell Shock" to PTSD, Veterans Have a Long Walk to Health

  by Charles Glass

  Iraq War veteran Will Robinson brought himself out of a mental health crisis by hiking more than 11,000 miles of trail from the Pacific Crest to the Appalachian, following the century-old prescription of British military doctor Arthur Brock. 

• 
• 5/14/2023
  

  Mary Wollstonecraft's Diagnosis of the Prejudices Holding Back Girls' Education Remains Relevant Today

  by Victoria Bateman

  Since Wollstonecraft's 1792 condemnation of the strictures of modesty and sexual purity as unjust impediments to the education of girls and women, they remain principal justifications for keeping girls out of school. 

• 
• 4/30/2023
  

  Travel Was a Driver of Eleanor Roosevelt's Leadership

  by Shannon McKenna Schmidt

  Eleanor Roosevelt's leadership on behalf of the New Deal and the national war effort were always enhanced by her enthusiasm for travel, which culminated in a 25,000 mile journey to the Pacific theater in August, 1943. 

• 
• 4/30/2023
  

  Can We Learn from Previous Generations of Historians Negotiating Between Past and Present?

  by Bruce W. Dearstyne

  A leading historian shook up the field with his insistence that historians engage with public concerns and research topics that shed light on the most pressing issues of contemporary society. The year was 1911. 

• 
• 4/30/2023
  

  Recognizing the "Other Renaissance" of Northern Europe

  by Paul Strathern

  From Copernicus to Shakespeare, the intellectual transformations of northern Europe have seldom been understood as a world-changing ferment akin to those taking place in Italy. 

• 
• 4/30/2023
  

  For Derby Day, a Note of Caution About Horses and "Races"

  by Mackenzie Cooley

  The thoroughbreds on display at Churchill Downs next Saturday carry on Italian renaissance practices of horse breeding for sport and aesthetic pleasure. But the spectacle warns of another legacy: the fateful transfer of the term "race" from purposefully selected lineages of horses to broad groupings of humans. 

• 
• 4/23/2023
  

  "Class War" is Back in the Headlines. But What is it, Really?

  by Mark Steven

  "The proclamation of class war is what linguists might describe as a speech act: a performative utterance that, when said, is also a kind of action," invoked in the hope of moving from class struggle to open conflict. 

• 
• 4/9/2023
  

  When Truly Stolen Elections Changed the Course of American History

  by Stan Haynes

  A massive conspiracy to bring in outside voters successfully stole an election everyone thought was vital to the fate of the country. It wasn't your state in 2020, but the Kansas Territory in 1854 and 1855.

• 
• 4/9/2023
  

  Why Did Madison Write the Second Amendment?

  by Carl T. Bogus

  Understanding the political peril that ensnared both the pre-ratification Constitution and James Madison himself makes it clear that the Second Amendment was written to ensure that southern state militias would be sufficiently armed to suppress slave revolts even if abolitionists controlled Washington. 

• 
• 4/2/2023
  

  50 Years Later: Eyewitness to the Last Day of US Military Command in Vietnam

  by Arnold Isaacs

  In this excerpt, a journalist observes the tragicomic exit of the last US military command in Vietnam 50 years ago on March 29, 1973.

• 
• 4/2/2023
  

  Learning from Historical Fiction: A Family Tale Reveals a Brief Multicultural Moment of the American West

  by Alix Christie

  One novelist's work adapting the story of her 19th century forebears (the last Hudson's Bay Company trader in the US, his Nez Perce wife, and the family that they raised) led her to archives, historians, and the challenge of narrating the complexities of the period when conquest supplanted a hybrid indigenous-European society between the Rockies and the Pacific. 

• 
• 3/19/2023
  

  The Curious History of Ulysses Grant's Great Grandfather

  by John Reeves

  The military experiences of Noah Grant in the French and Indian War typified changes in military strategy in the Americas and cemented a family commitment to the military that drove his great grandson Ulysses. 

• 
• 3/12/2023
  

  How The Irish Saved Wellington at Waterloo

  by Brendan Farrell

  For centuries, the Irish provided manpower to the British military, never more notably than on June 18, 1815. 

• 
• 3/12/2023
  

  What Makes a Rebel Into a Hero?

  by Stephen Dando-Collins

  The same political process that made a hero out of the rebel Julius Caesar made villains out of his assassins, and burnished the reputations of some other rebels against the Roman Empire. 

• 
• 3/5/2023
  

  Why We Don't Remember Edith Galt Wilson as the "First Woman President"

  by Richard Bluttal

  While the First Lady ran the executive branch while concealing the extent of Woodrow Wilson's ill health after a stroke, her unofficial stewardship raises too many questions about secrecy and its consequences to be celebrated today. 

• 
• 2/22/2023
  

  Arctic Explorer, Nazi-Fighter, Iconoclast: Peter Freuchen's Case for "Most Interesting Man in the World"

  by Reid Mitenbuler

  A biographer contents that an unlikely celebrity from the early twentieth century should inspire people today to take risks and embrace a humanism that doesn't depend on loyalty to party or ideology. While this without-a-net kind of public discussion is increasingly rare today, it's what makes people interesting.

• 
• 2/12/2023
  

  Scientists: The Unsung Heroes of the American West

  by Elliott West

  From animal husbandry to epidemiology, the work of scientists was critical to America's conquest of the west, while the region also provided critical evidence in the debate over Darwin's theory of natural selection.