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OAH/NCPH Sessions “Chart the Future of Teaching the Past”
Teaching students to think like historians may be an idea whose time has arrived. The April annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians (OAH/NCPH)/National Council for Public History...
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The Perils of Internet Research: The Case of LBJ and Affirmative Action
Affirmative action in employment as official U.S. policy began with President Lyndon Johnson’s 1965 Executive Order 11246. Designed to implement Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the order...
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The Science (and History) of Disgust: Interview with Psychologist Rachel Herz...
Only humans experience disgust, an emotion that evolved initially to help us avoid toxic food and disease and morphed into a manipulable sense that infuses personal choices about cuisine and friends...
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Slavery and the Myth of the Alamo
Two and a half million people visit the Alamo each year where, according to its website, “men made the ultimate sacrifice for freedom,” making it “hallowed ground and the Shrine of Texas Liberty.”There...
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At Last, Honor for Albert Wedemeyer, a Great American Soldier
Shortly after the Allies established a beachhead in Normandy in June 1944, George C. Marshall, the U.S. Army’s chief of staff, sent a cable to General Albert C. Wedemeyer telling him: “Your plan has...
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It's Time for a National World War I Memorial
Liberty Memorial in Kansas City (Wikipedia)On Monday Americans will gather to celebrate Memorial Day, a holiday on which we honor those who have served, and fallen, in our country's armed forces....
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Who Invented Memorial Day?
As Americans enjoy the holiday weekend, does anyone know how Memorial Day originated?On May 1, 1865, freed slaves gathered in Charleston, South Carolina to commemorate the death of Union soldiers and...
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Reflecting on Military Service
I shall depart here from reflecting on my scholarly life, for this is the time, in between Memorial Day and the anniversary of D-Day, where my thoughts go back to my military service. I was on active...
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This is Not Your Grandfather's Germany
Victor Davis Hanson has ambivalent thoughts about the Germans. On the one hand, he admires the characteristically “German” traits of hard work, thrift, and sound financial management, which, according...
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America's Moral Reckoning with War
As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan wind down, we might assume that the conversation about them and the future of American war efforts will enter a new stage. With a little space from the heat of these...
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The Forgotten American Pandemic: Historian Dr. Nancy K. Bristow on the...
The epidemic is seldom mentioned, and most Americans have apparently forgotten it. This is not surprising. The human mind always tries to expunge the intolerable from memory, just as it tries to...
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The Real Reason the Bible Bans Homosexuality
With the exception of requiring husbands to be faithful to their wives -- at least in theory -- the Hebrews treated adultery much as their neighbors did. They struck out on their own, however, in...
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Is Independence Day a Radical Holiday?
Fourth of July on Helena Island, SC, 1939. Credit: NARAAsk people what we celebrate on Independence Day, and they’ll probably name a discrete historical event such as the signing of the Declaration of...
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Nixon's Biggest Crime Was Far, Far Worse than Watergate
Left to right: Anna Chennault, Richard Nixon, South Vietnamese president Nguyen Van ThieuOn the thousands of hours of White House tapes Richard Nixon secretly recorded, you can hear him order exactly...
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Robert Caro and the Mythical Cuban Missile Crisis
The editor-in-chief of HNN, Rick Shenkman, asked me recently if I would write a critique of the account of the Cuban missile crisis in Robert Caro’s The Passage of Power, Volume 4 of his authoritative...
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Channelling George Washington: The Missing Word in the Declaration of...
“I bet you can’t tell me the important word that Tom Jefferson left out of the Declaration of Independence.”“You’ve got me baffled, Mr. President. What is it?”“Brotherhood.”“A fascinating thought. The...
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Remembering Watergate
Credit: Wikipedia/HNNNo leak, no "investigatory journalism" ever revealed any facet of what we know as "Watergate" that was not already a subject of investigation and inquiry by properly-authorized...
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The Most Famous Unknown Writer of the Twentieth Century: An Interview with...
I’ve never had any money except what my pen has brought me.--Winston Churchill (1945)The achievements of Winston Churchill as a politician and statesmen now eclipse his career as a writer. Perhaps the...
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The Legacy of the War of 1812 Is With Us Still
Battle of Lake Erie by William Henry Powell, 1873.Two hundred years ago today, American naval vessels fired the opening shots in what we know as the War of 1812. Like all wars, this was a war filled...
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Wisdom and War: From Homer’s Trojan Horse to Spielberg’s "War Horse"
In Steven Spielberg’s 2011 World War I epic War Horse there is a scene in which Joey, the titular equine hero, is entangled in barbed wire in the no-man’s-land between German and British trenches. An...
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