Historians/History

The Treasure Trove of the Soviet Archives

by Paul R. Gregory

The Soviet state and party archives, which began to be released for scholarly use in the early 1990s, offer a rare opportunity to write history using the very words of those who made history.The USSR, as created

A Minnesota Frontier Fort -- The Site of Genocide?

by Neda Raeker

The region at the convergence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers has been home to many different cultures for at least nine thousand years.  Fort Snelling has occupied that area for two hundred of those nine thousand years.  Minnesota historian Waziyata Win, also known as Dr. Angela Wilson, believes that during those two hundred years, the fort became a site of genocide committed against the Dakota Indians.  Now she wants the fort, reconstructed from its ruins in the 1970s by the Minnesota Historical Society, to be torn down.  "It feels like a constant assault on our Dakota humanity," she states.  "I don't want the fort sitting on that site of genocide."  Many share her view, and on this last Memorial Day weekend there was a large protest at the fort. For its part, the Minnesota Historical Society is working to include the darker parts of the fort's past in its exhibits, but resentment is still strong amongst many in the Dakota community.

How to Solve Congress's Fraction Problem

by George Szpiro

Each decade, on April 1 of the year that ends in a zero, the United States takes a census of its population.  The results affect the allocation o

A Corner of the Internet where History—and Civility—Flourish

by Sara Mayeux

The Internet has become a cesspool of rancor, slander, and nonsense.  Or so goes the conventional wisdom.  And if you scan the reader comments appended to almost any news article or blog post, the conventional wisdom is easy to believe.  I recently published an op-ed in a large regional newspaper.  I was pleasantly surprised that some online commenters seemed to have actually read my article and responded to points that I had made.  But not surprisingly, many ot

What Studying the Women in the Founders' Lives Reveals

by Thomas Fleming

With leaks and wandering emails, talk shows and tell-all aides, the private lives of today's politicians seem to have become public property. Whether this may eventually unravel the Republic is frequently debated in the media. Not

Now We Are Enemies Fifty Years On

by Thomas Fleming

In 1957, as the supposedly humdrum decade of the Fifties wound down, I was an aspiring novelist and busy magazine journalist.  One day I received an assignment from an editor to write a one page article on the Battle of B

HNN Hot Topics: Robert Byrd, the Historian's Senator

THANKS to Senator Byrd, nearly $1 billion of federal dollars have been allocated over the past decade to improve K-12 history education. A child who was in the first grade when the program started in 2001 would now be a junior in high school. So it is no exaggeration to say Senator Byrd's love of American history has been passed on to an entire generation of America's school children. Among his many accomplishments, that is one of his greatest legacies.—Lee White Executive Director, National Coalition for History

William Kunstler: The Lawyer Who Disturbed the Universe

by Ron Briley

In 2009, filmmakers Emily and Sarah Kunstler unveiled a documentary at the Sundance Film Festival about their father attorney William Kunstler which is finding its way into some theaters this year. This fascinating

Historians, Policymakers, and Hybrid Failures: A Menage à Trois in the Making?

by Robert E. Wright

Before we can expect better laws and regulations to come out of Washington, state capitals, or municipal governments, policymakers need access to good histories of some seriously understudied topics.  Historians are not quite Rodney Danger

The Past WAS a Foreign Country

by David Lowenthal

Randall Stephens [The Past Is No Foreign Country, HNN, June 28, 2010] commends my The Past Is a Foreig

The Cuban Embargo, South American Security, and Teaching America's "Officers-In-Training": An Interview with Naval Academy Professor Daniel Masterson

by Priscilla Hart

How has Cuba changed since Fidel Castro handed over power to his brother Raul? And how are U.S.-Cuban relations today?  As the U.S.-imposed Cuban embargo turns 50 this year—established the year after Castro came to power in 1959—many Americans wonder if United States foreign policy is still served by the embargo. Historian Daniel Masterson considers the arguments on both sides of the debate, and the Obama administration’s inertia in effecting change. An expert in Latin American civil-military relations, revolution and counterinsurgency, race relations and immigration, Professor Masterson also examines current affairs in South America as well as potential security concerns. Masterson began teaching at the United States Naval Academy, the second oldest of the country’s five service academies, in 1979. He has seen firsthand the academic training of thousands of young men and women who have gone on to provide key leadership roles as naval and marine corps officers and commanders in America’s military establishment. Located in Annapolis, Maryland on a windy stretch of land abutting the Chesapeake Bay, the Academy has influenced military policy and pioneered war technologies in a wide range of global and regional conflicts since its founding in 1845.

Jefferson: Founding Father and Connoisseur

by Wade Graham

This July 4th, Americans celebrate the 234th birthday of the United States and the 184th anniversary of the death of one of its founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson.  We revere the third president for his statesmanship and for the ringing prose of the Declaration of Independence, which he authored. Less well-known is the fact that Jefferson was also America's founding home and garden addict, a detail-obsessed improver who designed the perfect dwelling at Montice

Should Historians Have to Engage the Public?

by Jonathan Jarrett

Richard Overy, renowned UK historian of the Second World War, wrote in Times Higher Education about the division that he sees between popular history and academic history, the one being consumer-driven recycling of infotainment (I paraphrase) and the other, at its peak, "intentionally complex and linguistically sophistica

The Past is No Foreign Country

by Randall Stephens

“I don’t believe in change over time.”  I wish Glenn Beck would come out and say just that.I’ve watched quite a few of Beck’s 5:00 p.m. dispatches from disturbia.  I’ve seen his maniacal chalkboard talks on fascism and communism, with brisk arrows drawn to “progressivism,” “social justice,” and “unions.”  I’ve heard him tar the labor movement with the brush of nineteenth century racism, conveniently ignoring the Knights of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations.  I’v

Ten Disgraced Generals

by Steven Lomazow

In view of the recent highly publicized firing of General Stanley McChrystal, here is a retrospective list of the top ten American disgraced military leaders.  In descending order:Benedict ArnoldArnold is the epitome of the word "traitor," the

What Samuel Moyn Got Wrong in His Nation Article

by Jonathan Israel

In his recent article “Mind the Enlightenment,” published on May 20 on The Nation’s website, Sa

A Response to Jonathan Israel

by Samuel Moyn

I’ve answered Jonathan Israel’s first reply to my review-essay in the

We Need More General Wedemeyers

by John J. McLaughlin

General Albert C. Wedemeyer died in 1992 at the age of 92.  In the obituary of the New York Times on December 18, noted military historian John Keegan labeled Wedemeyer "one of the most intellectual and farsighted military minds America has ever produced."  He praised Wedemeyer for his efforts as chief strategist in formulating an overall war plan for the United States shortly before its entry into World War II, as well as his major role in planning the Norm

Michael Tomasky's Despairing Take on American History

by Joseph A. Palermo

In a recent piece in Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, titled "Against Despair: How Our Misreading of History Harms Progressivism Today," Michael Tomasky notes how The Huffington Post sometimes evokes Franklin D. Roosevelt in its assessment of President Barack Obama, which tells him something about "the way liberals interpret and talk about history."  (3)  Tomasky writes:We grew up with a set of assumptions.  If you were born in the U

The Missing Key to the Texas History Textbook Debate

by Kyle Ward

In 1826, Joseph Worcester published his high school history textbook titled Elements of History and began trying to get it adopted in schools throughout the United States.  This rather insignificant historical fact i