This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream
media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously
biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in
each source note. Quotation marks are not used.
Source: Los Angeles Times
4/25/2021
“Government doing something for people ... that was an idea that was disabled,” said Princeton historian Sean Wilentz. “He’s trying to bring it back.”
Source: Washington Post
4/24/2021
The Polish Jewish Lawyer Raphael Lemkin coined the term "genocide" in part after losing 49 family members to the Holocaust. But he was also motivated by his earlier study of the mass killings of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire.
Source: Bloomberg CityLab
4/21/2021
Cameron Blevins's new book documents the role of the postal service in enabling the westward expansion of the United States and the conquest of Native American peoples.
Source: Public Books
4/23/2021
Frederick Wiseman's documentaries valorize not only the institutions but the labor that makes local government function against the odds.
Source: Smithsonian
In the aftermath of the Civil War, a surprising number of Americans thought moving the capital (and the Capitol building itself) to St. Louis was a good idea, say historians Adam Arenson and Walter Johnson.
Source: New York Times
4/16/2021
by Jill Watts
Historian Jill Watts reviews new books on Black history by Kate Masur, Thomas C. Holt and Pamela Horowitz and Jeanne Theoharis.
Source: National History Center and Woodrow Wilson Center
4/22/2021
"James Banner’s book, the first full-length work on revisionist history since 1929, explains why, since the time of ancient Greece, historians have disagreed with others’ interpretations of the past."
Source: American Academy of Arts and Sciences
4/22/2021
Historians are represented among the 2020 electees to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Source: Washington Post
4/19/2021
by Patricia McCormick
Mary Ann Vecchio's life was forever changed by being pictured in the famous photograph with Kent State shooting victim Jeffrey Miller; she became a lightning rod for a nation's anger at age 14.
Source: New York Times
4/21/2021
"In 'On Juneteenth' Annette Gordon-Reed leads by example, revisiting her own experiences, questioning her own assumptions — and showing that historical understanding is a process, not an end point."
Source: TIME
4/21/2021
"They’re just picking up on these words and terms and phrases that have been used and misused for so long—but I do appreciate that people were really pushing back."
Source: New York Post
4/19/2021
The Jane Austen House museum will undertake an effort to examine and publicize the connections between the novelist's family and the Caribbean slave trade.
Source: Wolfson Foundation
4/21/2021
The Wolfson Foundation announces its shortlist for the UK's most prestigious award for history writing.
Source: Politico
4/20/2021
Historians Keisha N. Blain and Simon Balto, with legal scholar Rosa Brooks, are among experts commenting on the significance of the conviction of Derek Chauvin of charges including third degree murder for the death of George Floyd.
Source: NPR
4/15/2021
"In her new book, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth, historian Beth Allison Barr traces cultural sources of patriarchy that have all but erased women's historical importance as leaders of the faith."
Source: Public Books
4/16/2021
Historian Samuel Zipp reviews two new books by Nancy Cott and Stephen Wertheim that examine how the United States came to embrace, and perhaps become stuck with, a role as the world's policeman.
Source: The Bulwark
4/19/2021
by Shikha Dalmia and Arthur Melzer
"There aren’t many examples in the annals of liberal democracy when a major party abandoned so much of what it stood for so quickly for the sake of one man. The most notorious parallel is of course Weimar Germany."
Source: Smithsonian
4/19/2021
by Joshua D. Rothman
After Congress ended the importation of enslaved people in 1808, domestic traders made New Orleans the center of an increasingly active and lucrative slave trade.
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
4/19/2021
"What we teach in the liberal arts — hermeneutics, history, and theory — are intended to help you do this. Professional schools don’t teach these things. You are not going to learn them anywhere else."
Source: New York Times
4/20/2021
The Smithsonian is considering how to deal with its natural history collection of human remains, including those of enslaved people. Secretary Lonnie Bunch III suggests that the museum must be guided by the imperative "to honor and remember."
