How Venetians Invented Health Care

By Meredith F. Small

The Latest

• HNN
  

  

  A Personal Message from the Editor

  2020 showed how important history is for understanding the news. If HNN was an important source of insight and information for you in 2020, please support our work for 2021. 

• News at Home
  

  

  Stop the Music

  Richard H. Kohn

  President-Elect Biden has allowed too much speculation about his choices for Secretary of Defense and unwisely floated the name of a retired Army general for the job. He needs to make a quick commitment to a nominee whose national defense experience comes from the civil, not the military, arena.

• Historians/History
  

  

  Recognizing an Unrecognized Chinese American WWII Veteran

  A.J. Wong

  This week, Congress will honor all Chinese American World War II veterans with the Congressional Gold Medal, and some of their families will be eligible to receive a replica medal in their names. Hoy You Lim (林開祐) was killed in action in France in 1944. None of his survivors could complete the paperwork to receive his medal. The granddaughter of another Chinese American veteran wants to recognize his service. 

• Books
  

  

  How Wood Helped America Become Great – But Mislay its Sense of History

  Roland Ennos

  Industrializing America's infrastructure was much more likely than Europe's to be made of wood. This accident of nature and geography helped drive rapid expansion, but today means much of the 19th century built environment of the United States has vanished. 

• News at Home
  

  

  Let America Be America Again

  Ed Simon

  Outpourings of joy on November 7 when it became apparent Joe Biden had defeated Donald Trump don't mean that the nation's problems are solved, but spontaneous, collective celebration means people still have the capability to recognize our shared fate and work together.

• News at Home
  

  

  Plus ça change...? Alienation and Violence from Both Sides of Labor's Rise and Fall

  James Ottavio Castagnera

  Violence in the Pennsylvania coal fields in the 1870s may or may not have been the work of an Irish secret society, but showed the anger and frustration that fueled the rise of the American labor movement. What will become of social anger today when that movement is moribund? 

• Books
  

  

  Is There Anything Left to Learn about Hitler?

  James Thornton Harris

  Volker Ullrich presents a picture of a leader whose "egocentrism... inability to self-criticize…tendency to overestimate himself... contempt for others and lack of empathy" made him willing to destroy his nation along with himself, but warns that the Third Reich was "a dictatorship of consent." 

• News at Home
  

  

  Character was Trump's Achilles Heel

  John C. Waugh

  Explaining Donald Trump's reversal of fortune between 2016 and November 3 could be as simple as recognizing that the presidency gave his character no place to hide. 

• Roundup
  

  

  The Roundup Top Ten for December 4, 2020

  HNN Staff

  The week's top op-eds by historians or about history from around the web. 

• News at Home
  

  

  The Rise (and Fall?) of Trump's Viral Death Cult

  Brian Glyn Williams

  Trump's cult-leader response to COVID-19 is causing the equivalent of a Jonestown every day. 

• Historians/History
  

  

  UCLA Historian Carla Pestana Debunks Myths About the Pilgrims and the Plymouth Colony

  James Thornton Harris

  Alert Tom Cotton: Plymouth Rock, the Mayflower Compact, and the origins of Thanksgiving are just a few of the things Professor Carla Pestana finds in need of historical revision. 

• News at Home
  

  

  The Devil and Mary Lease

  Alan J. Singer

  Populist and feminist agitator Mary Lease advised farmers to "raise less corn and more hell." Her brand of hell-raising, however, included a strong current of antisemitism that needs to be widely known.

• Blog
  

  

  Nuclear Deterrence and Things Left to Chance

  (R)evolutionary Biology

  A beguiling, if horrifying, paradox of nuclear deterrence theory is that the credibility of a nuclear threat requires introducing uncertainty into the equation; one party must convince the other th...

• News at Home
  

  

  Biden will Confront Systemic Conservatism Despite a Mandate for Change

  Steven F. Lawson

  If Joe Biden wants to implement progressive change, he'll be stopped not by a lack of popular support, but by the conservatism built into American institutions. 

• Historians/History
  

  

  A Surprise Encounter with Zora Neale Hurston

  Fred Zilian

  The genius of Zora Neale Hurston has fascinated recent scholars, but one reader found traces of her legacy in an unexpected place. 

• Historians/History
  

  

  Take a Lesson from the Persistence of the Founder of Modern Thanksgiving

  William Lambers

  Sarah Josepha Hale pushed Abraham Lincoln to declare a national Thanksgiving holiday as a day to seek healing and unity. Fighting to end hunger is a way to recommit to the spirit of the holiday.

• Blog
  

  

  I Dare Call it Treason

  Steve Hochstadt

  Having a traitor in the White House was the fantasy of the TV thriller “Designated Survivor”. Now life imitat...

• HNN
  

  

  HNN Will Be Off for the Week

  History-related news will return on November 30, along with HNN's annual fund drive--until then, enjoy a restful and safe holiday!

• Roundup
  

  

  The Roundup Top Ten for November 20, 2020

  The week's top op-eds by historians from around the web. 

• News at Home
  

  

  Reckoning with Marcus Whitman and the Memorialization of Conquest

  Cassandra Tate

  The same period that saw the public affirmation of the Confederate Lost Cause myth saw a proliferation of monuments that portrayed the conquest of the indigenous people of the west as virtuous pioneering. The case of Marcus Whitman shows a national reckoning is in order.

• Historians/History
  

  

  Recovering Acts of Progressive Patriotism: Teaching Through Protest Music

  Matthew Lindaman

  A history professor reflects on a course teaching critical perspectives on patriotism through protest and music that articulates an inclusive and progressive nationalism.

• Historians/History
  

  

  A Medieval Perspective on the Public Acceptance of Women as Leaders

  Erika Graham-Goering

  Whether in medieval France or in modern democracies, women's exercise of leadership has been constrained by gendered ideas of who can lead. 

• Blog
  

  

  How John Hersey Exposed the Human Face of Nuclear War: Lesley Blume on Her New Book "Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-Up and The Reporter Who Revealed It to The World"

  Robin Lindley

  HNN interviews Lesley M.M. Blume about her new book on John Hersey and the government's effort to control the public perceptions of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

• News at Home
  

  

  Affirmative Action Goes Down to Defeat in Deep Blue California

  James Thornton Harris

  The defeat of California's Proposition 16 exposes some significant fault lines in the multiethnic coalition the Democratic Party hopes will support its future success. 

• News Abroad
  

  

  Can the COVID Crisis Create a New Civilian-Military Trust in Argentina?

  David M. K. Sheinin y Cesar R. Torres

  Many Argentinians have been suspicious of military involvement in civil affairs since the end of the country's military dictatorship in 1983. Two scholars ask if the COVID crisis presents an opportunity for healing and reimagining the military's role in Argentina.

• News at Home
  

  

  Why the Odds Are Good that Biden Can Reduce Our Political Polarization

  Walter G. Moss

  A recent HNN essay took a pessimistic view of President-Elect Biden's ability to govern a polarized nation. Walter Moss takes a longer view and finds more cause for optimism. 

• Blog
  

  

  Who Will Form the Biden Cabinet?

  Ronald L. Feinman

  A presidential and political historian suggests choices for a Biden cabinet that will please (most) of the Democratic base, have a chance to win nomination by the Senate, not put any Democratic Sen...

• Roundup
  

  

  Roundup Top Ten for November 13, 2020

  The top opinion writing by historians from around the web this week.