Books
-
8/9/2020
Reflections from "That Further Shore": A Constitutional Lawyer's Immigrant Family History
by John Feerick
John Feerick's work in constitutional law helped create the 25th Amendment, and an unadopted amendment to abolish the Electoral College. His recent family history and memoir shows how his immigrant parents laid a foundation for this success.
-
7/26/2020
Who Opened the Door to Trumpism? David Frum's "Trumpocalypse" Reviewed
by David O'Connor
Through his long analysis of Trump’s follies, Frum never develops his contention that twenty-first-century conservatism helped open the door for Trump. Without a full accounting, his political mea culpa is hollow and fails to offer guidance on how to avoid mistakes in the future.
-
7/3/2020
How Britain and Churchill Repelled the Nazi War Machine (1940-1941)
by Jeff Roquen
In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson has not only produced an engaging and timely portrait of the perilous period of when Britain stood alone against Nazi Germany but has also illuminated how tragedy and loss can be turned into a triumph and justice through steadfast determination and solidarity of purpose.
-
7/3/2020
New Novel "The Collaborator" Explores the Moral Ambiguities of a Holocaust Rescuer
by Diane Armstrong
Do we have the right to judge the actions of people in life and death situations? Are we honour-bound to keep promises, no matter to whom they were made, and in what situations? Can a man be a hero and a collaborator?
-
6/28/2020
Newest Born of Nations: European Nationalism and the Confederate States of America
by Ann Tucker
White southerners looked to contemporary European nationalist movements and compared the South to aspiring nations abroad. This allowed them to conceive of the South as a potential nation, distinct from the North and separate from the United States, and to justify secession and the creation of the Confederacy.
-
6/28/2020
Big Alex McKenzie and the Last Great Fraud of the Gilded Age
by Paul Starobin
Alexander McKenzie’s plot to corner Alaska’s gold proved to be the last great swindle of the original gilded age, as this seamy chapter in our national life gave way to what become known as the Progressive Era.
-
6/14/2020
The SS Officer's Armchair
by Daniel Lee
The discovery of a trove of documents in an old armchair led the author on a five-year search for information about a previously anonymous Nazi, whose history intersected with the author's family in surprising ways.
-
6/7/2020
Excerpt: Routine Dehumanization Under Jim Crow Policing
by Kevin Shird
Police in Jim Crow Alabama offered two kinds of outreach to schools: an "Officer Friendly" visit to white children, and traumatizing and intimidating threats of incarceration to black children.
-
6/7/2020
"I Imagine Everything Happened on Beale Street": Remembering Memphis in "Brother Robert"
by Annye C. Anderson and Preston Lauterbach
In an excerpt from the new book Brother Robert, Annye Anderson, sister of blues legend Robert Johnson, describes time spent with Johnson in Memphis, and the trends in music, movies, and black politics that shaped Johnson's personality as well as his innovative music.
-
5/31/2020
The Decline and Fall of Socialist Zionism (Review)
by Ralph Seliger
A new book examines the diminished influence of left and labor parties in Israeli politics.
-
5/31/2020
"Fiction Makes a Better Job of The Truth"? Telling the Erased Story of Lucia Joyce
by Annabel Abbs
A historical novel exposes the complex relationship between historians and sources: "Because Lucia’s own voice had been effectively smothered, most ‘facts’ came from those later responsible for incarcerating her in a series of mental asylums and hospitals. Few sources are genuinely independent, memory is notoriously fickle, and all facts are open to interpretation."
-
5/17/2020
A Mathematical Duel in 16th Century Venice (Excerpt)
by Fabio Toscano translated Arturo Sangalli
The advancement of mathematics in renaissance Italy was complicated by a context of secrecy, jealousy, and competitive dueling governed by implicit codes of honor.
-
5/10/2020
Spiritualism and Suspension Bridges: John Roebling and a Biographer's Sympathy for the Weird 19th Century
by Richard Haw
A biographer of Brooklyn Bridge designer John Roebling expected to write about a genius. He also ended up writing about a complete weirdo, and how one man could be both.
-
5/6/2020
The Heroism of an Ordinary American Woman on the World War II Homefront
by Jim DeFelice
We should definitely celebrate people like Henry Langrehr, the paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne, and the other troops who fought with them. But we should also spend a moment thanking people like his wife, who made their triumph possible.
-
4/12/2020
The Other Booths
by David O. Stewart
The notoriety of the Lincoln assassination has obscured the other Booths in history, but some were as well known as John Wilkes--or even better, at least until he pulled the trigger in the president’s box at Ford’s Theater, 155 years ago this week.
-
3/27/2020
An Interview with "Most Wanted" Author Sarah Jane Marsh
by Chelsea Connolly
"Although I use individuals such as Adams, Hancock, and Paine as a vehicle for the story, I want readers to understand the American Revolution was ultimately a mass movement of the people."
-
3/22/2020
The Three Daring Women Who Traversed the Himalayas
by Kayte Nunn
Antonia Deacock, Anne Davies, Eve Sims set off overland from England to Tibet in 1958, a 16,000 mile journey to aim climb one of the Himalayas’ unexplored high peaks.
-
3/22/2020
Why Holocaust Fiction?
by Bernice Lerner
Had they had a choice, I believe Hitler’s victims would have wanted nothing about the mortal crimes against them falsified.
-
3/22/2020
When the Western Wall Was A Battleground For Jewish Rights
by Moshe Phillips
The book explains how Segal and the others who followed in his footsteps transformed the Western Wall from a site of wailing to one of national pride.
-
3/22/2020
Our Stories Will Carry Us to the Future. Can They Save Us Now?
by David Farrier
To avert a climate disaster, science is essential, but we also need stories. We know ourselves first and foremost in the tales we tell.
News
- The Real Reason the American Economy Boomed After World War II
- Florence Revives Medieval Plague-Era ‘Wine Windows’ for Contactless Service
- Tulane Canceled a Talk by the Author of an Acclaimed Anti-Racism Book After Students Said the Event Was 'Violent'
- Sunday Reading: Hiroshima
- More Than a Century Before the 19th Amendment, Women were Voting in New Jersey
- Black Americans Who Served in WWII Faced Segregation and Second-Class Roles
- Lincoln Library Cancels Exhibition Over Racial Sensitivity Concerns
- Nixon Did Call the Military on Protesters. He Just Covered It Up.
- Historians Pay Tribute: ‘Today We Live In John Hume’s Ireland, And Thank God For That’
- Let Us Drink in Public