Our Stories Will Carry Us to the Future. Can They Save Us Now?
By David Farrier
The Latest 
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Why Holocaust Fiction?
Bernice Lerner
Had they had a choice, I believe Hitler’s victims would have wanted nothing about the mortal crimes against them falsified.
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Plots Against America?: Jim Crow was Homegrown Fascism
Guy Lancaster
HBO’s prestige adaptation of Philip Roth’s 2004 novel The Plot Against America makes it worthwhile to examine whether fascism is really so alien to the United States as many wish to believe.
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The Three Daring Women Who Traversed the Himalayas
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.
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As We Zoom into Online Learning….
Norman J.W. Goda
To learn effectively, we all need to be, once again, in the same room. Let’s hope it is soon.
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Use What You Know: Online Teaching Tools
Kevin Gannon
Many historians have already been doing this kind of teaching online, so there might not be the need for you to re-discover fire.
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The Cultural Constants of Contagion
Ed Simon
Plague is, in some ways, a type of cultural absolute zero, a shared experience of extremity that does seem to offer certain perennial themes that approach universality.
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Bancroft Prize Goes to Books on Emancipation and Urban Renewal
The scholars Joseph P. Reidy and Lizabeth Cohen have won the prize, one of the most prestigious honors in the field of American history.
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Updated 3/27: What Historians Are Saying About Covid-19 and Trump's Response
HNN Staff
Their tweets, retweets, and comments on social media.
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Updated 3/27: Historians Discuss the Media's Coverage of COVID-19
Journalism is the first draft of history. Twitterstorians wield the red pen.
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Blog
An Interview with Mary V. Thompson on the Lives of the Enslaved Residents of Mount Vernon
Robin Lindley
Mary V. Thompson brings to life a complicated history of enslaved people and their legendary owner.
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When the Western Wall Was A Battleground For Jewish Rights
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.
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The Cost of Loyalty: A Crisis of Ethics in the Military
Timothy Bakken
Military leadership has inculcated a self-serving culture of loyalty that prevents a long-overdue reckoning with its failures.
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"Faster" Author Neal Bascomb on the Jewish Auto Racer who Defied Hitler
Neal Bascomb
Rene Dreyfus, a former top driver on the international racecar circuit, had been banned from the best European teams—and fastest cars—by the mid-1930s because of his Jewish heritage.
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Golda Meir and Women's Wartime Leadership
Jonathan W. Jordan and Emily Anne Jordan
Are women seeking the presidency held back by Americans' mistrust of female military leadership? The example of Golda Meir suggests they shouldn't be.
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I Taught my Students to Create Hoaxes in Public. Here’s Why
Keith A. Erekson
The discipline of history has much to offer our present age of misinformation in terms of subject matter and analytical methods.
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Trump's Budget Proposal Reveals His Values
Lawrence Wittner
It is often said that government budgets are “an expression of values.” Those values are clear in the Trump administration’s $4.8 trillion budget proposal for 2021, unveiled early this February.
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Churchill, Stalin and the Legacy of the Grand Alliance: An Interview with Professor Geoffrey Roberts
Aaron J. Leonard
Geoffrey Roberts assesses the history and legacy of the wartime alliance and political relationship between Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin.
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The Life and Times of Flamboyant Rock Music Impresario Bill Graham
Bruce Chadwick
The New York Historical Society presents the rock & roll world of Bill Graham (1931–1991), one of the most influential concert promoters of all time, through August 23.
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Does Lincoln or Trump Represent the Conscience of the Republican Party?
Richard Striner
The comparison between Lincoln’s Republican Party and today’s Republican Party is especially troubling.
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Do We Want the Progressive Sanders or the Pragmatist Biden?
Walter G. Moss
Because his pragmatic style matches more the American tradition, Biden has a better chance of unifying our nation and delivering positive long-range results.
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HNN Introduces Classroom Activity Kits
Chelsea Connolly and Kyla Sommers
Combining the fields of journalism and history, these activity kits provide educators with complete downloadable lesson plans.
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A Founder of American Religious Nationalism
Katherine Stewart
Christian nationalism today is a political movement, and its primary goal is power. Its ultimate aim, formulated by R.J. Rushdoony, is to replace our modern constitutional Republic with a “biblical” order that derives its legitimacy not from the people but from God and the Bible – or, at least, the God and the Bible that men like Rushdoony claimed to know.
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A Price to Be Paid
Col. Arthur Shaw (Ret.) and Robert L. Wise
None of us had any idea how terrible the cost would be before we finished taking Okinawa. The casual observer might have concluded that the landing was so easy, war must be a walk in the park.
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Jack Welch Was a Bitter Foe of American Workers
Erik Loomis
Most national obituaries left out or downplayed Jack Welch’s greatest impact in shaping the unequal and unfair America of today: unionbusting.
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Who Killed Ralph Featherstone?
Peter Levy
Reopening the investigation of the bombing deaths of Ralph Featherstone and William Payne at the fiftieth anniversary of the crime will shed further light on the dangers of unchecked government agencies and the shortcomings of the fifth estate.
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Covering the Troubles in Northern Ireland
Ron Steinman
I covered the Troubles in Northern Ireland for NBC News for four years, from the summer of 1969 until 1973. Even as a journalist with significant experience covering conflict, I knew I was in for a new ride.
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Kamikazes at the Battle of Okinawa
Joseph Wheelan
On May 6, 1945, a twin-engine kamikaze plane’s bomb exploded beside the destroyer Luce, part of the radar picket ship screen surrounding Okinawa, and ripped her starboard side “like a sardine can.”
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Historical Novelists Owe the Truth to Readers–and to History
Sharon Kay Penman
In insisting upon the importance of historical accuracy in novels, I am also making an argument that novels can add a valuable dimension to the study of history.
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Greetings from New HNN Editor Michan Connor
Michan Connor
I am very excited to be carrying on the legacy of HNN, which has long championed the idea that historians have important things to say about today.
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Truth and History: Historical Truth and Historical Narrative
Yoav J. Tenembaum
Historical narratives may reflect historical truth or not. Their aim is not necessarily to ascertain what actually happened in the past, but to justify what happens in the present.
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America’s First Literary Voice
William Lambers
The thoughts and feelings of Anne Bradstreet, written hundreds of years ago, live on with us today.
News
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- ‘Unworthy Republic’ Takes an Unflinching Look at Indian Removal in the 1830s
- The Unlikely Story Behind Japanese Americans' Campaign For Reparations
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- A Side Effect of Remote Teaching During Covid-19? Videos That Can Be Weaponized
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