Current Events that Relate to History
-
CommentThe Democratic Promise of Manifest Destiny
All Americans with some education are aware that Manifest Destiny was one of the Bad Things in our past and very few know any more about it than that.Compact -
Book ExcerptWhat Can We Learn From the Jewish Debate Over Slavery?
This Passover, American Jews should embrace the fight for “emancipation of all kinds.”Slate -
CommentRFK Jr.’s 18th-Century Idea About Mental Health
The health secretary’s clearest plans for psychiatric treatment are a retreat to the past.The Atlantic -
CommentAt the Smithsonian, Donald Trump Takes Aim at History
The urge to police the past is hardly an invention of the Trump Administration. It is the reflexive obsession of autocrats everywhere.The New Yorker -
ExhibitJFK Files: Revelations from the Covert Operations High Command
Special Group and PFIAB meeting minutes provide dramatic view of CIA operations.National Security Archive -
Book ReviewDonald Trump’s Long Con
Trump’s “Art of” trilogy may be full of willful exaggeration but the books also reveal how the 1980s and 90s formed his dog-eat-dog worldview.The Nation -
exhibitInternational Trade
Histories of how money and commodities have flowed across borders, from the slave-based economies of maritime empires to contemporary globalization.
From the HNN Archive
-
What Is the Role of the Historian?
Rethinking the job of history — and the American Historical Association — after the veto of the Gaza “scholasticide” resolution. -
“A Party for the White Man”
The scene at the 1964 Republican National Convention, when Barry Goldwater was nominated and black Republicans’ worst fears about their party were confirmed. -
Indifferent to the Fate of Freedom Elsewhere
Jimmy Carter is known for his defense of human rights worldwide. But in 1979, he threatened to deport thousands of Iranian student protesters. -
Ohio’s Little-Known Fascist Member of Congress
How a local prosecutor protected white supremacists and went on to a career in Washington, DC. -
When Good Housekeeping Meant Getting Vaccinated Against Polio
The pages of 1950s lifestyle magazines offer a glimpse of a time when childhood vaccines were anything but controversial. -
The Forebears of JD Vance and the New Right
Revisiting the Agrarian-Distributists and their fabrication of an American past. -
The Burned-Over District
The Northeast caught fire this fall, in a way that recalls its past. History has some lessons about how to manage the region’s fire seasons to come. -
Who Built the Panama Canal?
Finding testimony from the Afro-Caribbean workers who changed the Americas forever.