Each year at Bunk, we review many thousands of terrific articles about the American past. Last year, we selected about 1500 of them for the project’s archive. As 2021 was turning into 2022, I went back through that pile of digital content and pulled out a few of my favorites from the year just concluded. You’ll find that list below.
First, a few brief notes on what’s included here. Those of you familiar with this site will know that it houses a wide range of history-related content, from book reviews to videos to digital history projects. This year’s Top 40 is somewhat narrower in scope. To be included on the list, the rules were that the content must be:
- An original piece of writing published online in 2021.
- Not a book review*, book excerpt, or interview transcript.
The 40 essays on the list have been organized into categories that roughly mirror the section headings on our site (Belief, Beyond, Culture, etc.) You may notice some common themes emerging as you explore them. At the risk of ruining the surprise, I’ll try and name a few of them upfront.
Many of the pieces set out – implicitly or explicitly – to explain our current moment by way of the past. At the same time, they don't obscure the extent to which they’re also about the present, itself a moving target. Nor do they traffic in the kinds of unexamined set pieces and intellectual clichés that characterize so much of the political and historical commentary published online each day.
Reflecting on the stories here, I realize that almost all of them managed to unsettle, in one way or another, my prior understandings about their subjects. By shining the light of time on what I thought I knew before, and illuminating the contradictions, ironies, and complexities therein, they made the world seem at once stranger and more familiar. So many of us grow up with the idea of history as a piling on of names, dates, and events. But the best history writing has almost the opposite effect, scraping away the accretion of meanings forged by a lifetime of here-and-nows, offering in its place a new lens through which the world appears richer, more vibrant, and ideally, more navigable to those compelled to make it a better place.
With that, here’s the list. Hopefully it will keep you busy until next winter. Until then, as a great man once said, “keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars!"
-Tony Field, Editor
*A list of our favorite book reviews from 2021 is forthcoming.
ON IDEOLOGY
[Belief]
ON WAR
[Beyond]
ON PICTURES
[Culture]
ON VIDEO GAMES
[Culture]
ON APPROPRIATION
[Culture]
ON RELATIONS
[Family]
