Andrea Casali: The Personification of History Writing on the Back of Time, early 1760s

Ego-Histories

The more that historians make their own experiences an explicit part of their work, the harder it will become to let the sources speak clearly.

Two Cheers for Presentism

An essay by the president of the American Historical Association generated a firestorm of criticism — but got some things right.
Photograph from the Nuremberg trials. At center, a man in a suit is sitting down wearing a headset. Behind him are two guards for the trials.

What is Left of History?

Joan Scott’s "On the Judgment of History" asks us to imagine the past without the idea of progress. But what gets left out in the process?
Portrait illustration of Volodymyr Zelensky with the colors of the Ukrainian flag.

The Zelensky Myth

Why we should resist hero-worshipping Ukraine’s president.
‘The Proposed Emigrant Dumping Site’; cartoon by Victor Gillam from Judge magazine, March 22, 1890

Whose Freedom?

On the ways that people have conflated freedom with whiteness but pays too little attention to the force of freedom as a concept.
Benito Mussolini standing above an endless crowd.

Are We Living in an Age of Strongmen?

A new book by Ruth Ben-Ghiat discusses the past and present challenges posed by authoritarianism, but misses the conditions in which it arises.

The Contagious Revolution

For a long time, European historians paid little attention to the extraordinary series of events that now goes by the name of the Haitian Revolution.

Where Does Truth Fit into Democracy?

In modern democracies, who gets to determine what counts as truth—an elite of experts or the people as a whole?

Is it Still Okay to Venerate George Washington and Thomas Jefferson?

The president's stand on the Confederate hero represents the kind of moral relativism that conservatives usually decry.