Current Events that Relate to History
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Book ReviewHow the Red Scare Reshaped American Politics
At its height, the political crackdown felt terrifying and all-encompassing. What can we learn from how the movement unfolded—and from how it came to an end?The New Yorker -
ProfileThe Measles Vaccine Came From His Body. He Went Anti-vax. Not Anymore.
As a boy, David Edmonston was the source of today’s measles vaccine. Now he regrets vaccine doubts.Washington Post -
Book ExcerptHow a Group of 19th-Century Historians Helped Relativize the Violent Legacy of Slavery
Scott Spillman on the scholarship and intellectual legacies of Ulrich Bonnell Phillips, William Dunning and other academics.Literary Hub -
ExplainerSocial Security Is Not a Ponzi Scheme
Today’s attacks are just the latest form of backlash to the New Deal.Boston Review -
Museum ReviewHow to Forget Alvin Ailey
Even as “Edges of Ailey” gathers such intimate documents, it does not make them legible to its visitors.Public Books -
CommentThe Nation’s Archivist Should Not Be Political
Trump’s clumsy partisan takeover of the National Archives and Records Administration recalls two consequential and troubling episodes from its history.The Bulwark -
exhibitSocial Safety Net
How Americans through the years have approached the thorny questions of identifying who the government is obliged to help and how such assistance should be funded and distributed.
From the HNN Archive
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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. -
Letting the World Scream
In 1984, the U.S. rejected the International Court of Justice’s jurisdiction, revealing its tendency to ignore international rules it sees as unfavorable — even when it helped write them. -
The First and Last Queen of Haiti in Exile
Queen Marie-Louise outlived most of her family, yet her story about the revolution and its aftermath was rarely consulted by those writing the era’s history. -
Ohio’s Little-Known Fascist Member of Congress
How a local prosecutor protected white supremacists and went on to a career in Washington, DC. -
The Forebears of JD Vance and the New Right
Revisiting the Agrarian-Distributists and their fabrication of an American past. -
Nuggets of Condescension
By universalizing their own economic history, Western observers have used the past to portray African economic culture as backward and inadequate. -
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.