Historians/History

When Writing About John Muir, I Had to See What He Saw

by Donald Worster

For the past seven years I have been busy writing, in my non-teaching hours, the life story of the great California naturalist, John Muir.  Part of the rea

The Myth of Arab Innocence

by Elliott A. Green

The myth of Arab innocence throughout history --particularly concerning Jews-- has long haunted British and American writing about the Arab-Israeli conflict. Professors Walt and Mearsheimer put it as follows in their anti-Israel tract: ...in the Christian West... Jews suffered greatly from the despicable legacy of Anti-Semitism... But ... the creation of Israel involved additional crimes against a largely innocent third party: the Palestinians. This art

The Historians' Paradox

by Peter Charles Hoffer

History is impossible. Nothing I have written or could write in The Historians' Paradox: A Philosophy of History for Our Times, will change that brute fact. We cannot go back in time. But doing history, stu

Jefferson and Hemings: An Interview with Annette Gordon-Reed

by David Liebers

Annette Gordon-Reed, professor of law at New York Law School, made a splash with her book Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Contro

Can a Turkey Be a Historical Artifact?

by Jonathan Rees

A few weeks before Thanksgiving 2007, the New York Timesran a story about the booming market for heritage turkeys.  A heritage turkey can be any turkey from a breed other than the kind found in most grocery stores.  As the Times described it, this niche has grown greatly in recent years in response to the homogenization of the

Why We Need A People's History of Sports

by Dave Zirin

There are those who insist that sports and politics don't belong in the same sentence, the same zip code, or the same universe.They mouth platitudes about how these two worlds must be hermetically sealed from one anot

Lincoln in His Time and Ours: Highlights from the Columbia University Symposium

by Nicholas Osborne

If pressed to select the unifying lesson of “Lincoln in His Time and Ours,” a

Please, President-Elect Obama, Reverse Bush's Muzzling of Presidential Records

by Joseph Palermo

On March 25, 2003, President George W. Bush issued Executive Order 13292 that delayed for years to come public access to millions of pages of documents that were scheduled for release. He claimed that “sensitive information” needed to be reviewed prior to the release -- though the federal government had many years to get ready for this deadline. The Bush order reversed President Bill Clinton's previous order (12958) that held a presumption in favor of disclosure. Weirdly, Bush

Failures of the Presidents: JFK's Bay of Pigs Disaster

by Thomas J. Craughwell with M. William Phelps

Many of the men of Brigade 2506 believed fervently that they were the first wave of Cuban freedom fighters who would liberate their homeland.

Iraq, Vietnam, and the Lessons from History

by Ingo Trauschweizer

History never repeats itself exactly, but given the undercurrent of comparing the present war in Iraq to the Vietnam War, it is essential that historians in and of the United States reconsider basic assumptions of the latter conflict. The lessons we may learn from such a r

The Civil War Through Slaves' Eyes: An Interview with Andrew Ward

by Robin Lindley

Thousands of books have been written on the American Civil War, a brutal and devastating four-year conflict from 1861 to 1865 that left more than 600,000 combat

HNN Poll: 61% of Historians Rate the Bush Presidency Worst

by Robert S. McElvaine

Related Links Thomas Fleming: Was George W. Bush the Worst President? Lincoln ranked best US president by historians Robert S. McElvaine: Historians vs. George W. Bush Larry DeWitt: The Follies of Instant History: Another Meaningless Poll of Historians Ron Radosh: Bush’s Legacy in History and the Press Kathryn Moore: George W. Bush: As He Now Appears in a History Book Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilmes: The $10 trillion hangover ... Paying the price for eight years of Bush Nate Silver: History May -- or May Not -- Judge Bush More Kindly “As far as history goes and all of these quotes about people trying to guess what the history of the Bush administration is going to be, you know, I take great comfort in knowing that they don’t know what they are talking about, because history takes a long time for us to reach.”— George W. Bush, Fox News Sunday, Feb10, 2008

The Liberal Hour: An Interview with G. Calvin Mackenzie and Robert Weisbrot

by David Liebers

G. Calvin Mackenzie is The Goldfarb Family Distinguished Professor of Government at Colby College and author or editor of more than a dozen books.  Robert Weisbrot is Christian A. Johnson Distinguished Teaching Professor of History also at Colby College, and specializes in Modern American history, the Presidency of John F. Kennedy and the Cold War. (All responses are collaborative efforts between the two authors.)  

It's Time to Teach the Truth About Slavery in New York

by William Loren Katz

As some southern legislatures, prodded by African American representatives, expressed regret over their states' role in slave trading and exploiting slave labor, a kind of “truth and reconciliation” movement has stirred educators. So far the focus has been on the southern states where African people were brutally exploited, their families sundered, resulting in a civil war and a nation wide system of racial inequality.Now some educators are claiming this truth omits the complicity of “the free North.” Each northern state profited from slave labor until the end of the colonial period, and for decades after some continued to profit from the slave trade and tolerate slavery while loudly championing liberty!

Mr. Jefferson's Women

by Jon Kukla

Hundreds of books and articles have been written about Thomas Jefferson’s extraordinary life, genius, and achievements. With few exceptions, however, little was known about the women who figured in Jefferson&rsq

We Shouldn't Forget to Celebrate the Treaty of Paris

by Thomas Fleming

     Two hundred and twenty five years ago, on  September 3, 1783, Benjamin Franklin, John Jay and John Adams went to the Hotel D&rsqu

The Age of Reagan: An Interview with Sean Wilentz (Part II)

by Rick Shenkman

Part one of this interview appeared in September.One of the great ironies you draw attenti

Hiroshima Revisionism: An Interview with Robert Maddox

by Victor Fic

"I regard Hiroshima [revisionism] as the greatest hoax in American history."--Robert Maddox If the atomic bombing of Hiroshima released tremendous heat and blast physically, the debate over its justification can be intellectually incindiary. Robert Maddox, a veteran historian, is now the leading thinker in a broad effort that exposes revisionist critics of the atomic strike as guilty of impoverished or dishonest analysis. Maddox was trained at Rutgers University an

Bush the Great?

by Phillip Payne

In his recent piece in the New York Times Stanley Fish ("George Bush:  The Comeback Kid") entered into the debate on the legacy of George W. Bush.  What will be Bush’s place in the pantheon of presidents?   As should be expected at the end of a two-term president who did not want to play “small ball” but whose policies seem to be ending in failure, the c

Spies Who May or May Not Exist: The 1948 Hiss-Chambers U.S. Spy Trial

by Mark Weisenmiller

On August 3, 1948 Whittaker Chambers---then a Senior Editor at “Time” Magazine and  a former member of the Communist Party---testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Un-American Action Committee (HUAC) in Washington D.C. that Alger Hiss---then the President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and