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A painting of the American Founders at the Constitutional Convention.

Inventing American Constitutionalism

On "Power and Liberty," a condensed version of Gordon Wood's entire sweep of scholarship about constitutionalism.
Marihuana revenue stamp $1 1937

1910s Cannabis Discourse and Prohibition

Does marijuana prohibition have racist origins? Where did ideas of “reefer madness” come from? This project looks to the historical record for answers.
Illustration of Abraham Lincoln writing the Emancipation Proclamation.

Abraham Lincoln Is a Hero of the Left

Leftists have regarded Lincoln as a pro-labor hero who helped vanquish chattel slavery. We should celebrate him today within the radical democratic tradition.
David Grim's map showing the damage that New York City suffered from two large fires.

David Grim’s Fairy Tale: The New York City Fire In Myth

We may never know with absolute certainty that the Great Fire was an accident, but Grim certainly made it harder for anyone to argue otherwise.
Exhibit

The History of History

How historians and educators have written and taught about different eras of the American past.

A group of white veteran students in 1945, beneficiaries of the GI Bill.

The Blindness of Colorblindness

Revisiting "When Affirmative Action Was White," nearly two decades on.
John Winthrop.

When Perry Miller Invented America

In a covenantal nation like the United States, words are the very ligaments that hold the body together, and what words we choose become everything.
Henry Arthur McArdle’s The Battle of San Jacinto (1895), depicting the final battle of the Texas Revolution of 1836.

The Long American Counter-Revolution

Historian Gerald Horne has developed a grand theory of U.S. history as a series of devastating backlashes to progress—right down to the present day.
James Sweet's Article, the American Historical Association publication, and the Twitter logo.

What AHA President James Sweet Got Wrong—And Right

Attacking presentism as a mindset of younger scholars doesn’t solve any of the historical profession's problems.
Painting, a portrait of Thayendanegea, depicting a a Native American in a red and orange headdress.

Do We Have the History of Native Americans Backward?

They dominated far longer than they were dominated, and, a new book contends, shaped the United States in profound ways.
Illustration of African American Civil War soldier examining newspaper by torchlight as a Black family watches.

On War and U.S. Slavery: Enslaved Black Women’s Experiences

Enslaved women’s experiences with war must be extended to include the everyday warfare of slavery.
photo of C. Vann Woodward, c/o William R. Ferris, Van Every Smith Galleries

What Is There To Celebrate?

A review of "C. Vann Woodward: America’s Historian."
An art installation that evokes the Hollywood sign with the phrase "Indian Land".

Contest or Conquest?

How best to tell the story of oppressed peoples? By chronicling the hardships they’ve faced? Or by highlighting their triumphs over adversity?
Library of Ashurbanipal Mesopotamia 1500-539 BC Gallery, British Museum, London

Stop Weaponizing History

Right and left are united in a vulgar form of historicism.
AHA logo

Responses to “Is History History?”

Responding to a controversial recent critique of "presentism," two historians make the case that history and politics have always been deeply interwoven.
Black-and-white photograph of black students sitting in a classroom at the Tuskegee Institute.

The Complicity of the Textbooks

A new book traces how the writing of American history, from Reconstruction on, has falsified and illuminated our racial past.
“The Course of Empire: The Consummation of Empire,” by Thomas Cole (1835-36), depicting Greek classical style buildings and opulence.

History Is Always About Politics

What the recent debates over presentism get wrong.

Two Cheers for Presentism

An essay by the president of the American Historical Association generated a firestorm of criticism — but got some things right.
Panel of medieval-era paintings depicting humans and animals.

When Did Racism Begin?

The history of race has animated a highly contentious, sometimes fractious debate among scholars.
Black and white photo of children holding signs about remembrance, at a depot in New York City to greet their parents after a mass strike parade in 1911.

The Building Blocks of History

A lively defense of narrative history and the lived experience that informs historical writing.
Caricature of Richard Hofstadter surrounded by various American political figures

The Tragedy of the American Political Tradition

What prospects are there today for assessing American politics and history from an early Hofstadterian remove?
Store window selling shirts and ties mentioning the "Nixon Squeeze"

The Burglaries Were Never the Story

The historical insights of one era have been lost to the journalistic instincts of another.
Statue of a man reading to children: the Kunta Kinte-Alex Haley Memorial, Annapolis, Maryland.

Black Genealogy After Alex Haley’s Roots

"A lot has been hidden from Black Americans. And so there is always a longing to know who you are and where you come from.”
Civil War veterans in the Grand Army of the Republic, Cazenovia, New York, circa 1900.

The American Civil War and the Case for a “Long” Age of Revolution

Koch argues that the Age of Revolution, known mainly as the period between the American Revolution and the Revolutions of 1848, continued all the way to 1865.
Black and white photo of D-Day Normandy Landings

For the Anniversary of D-Day - Blitzkrieg Manquée? Or, a New Mode of "Firepower War"?

Why and how did D-Day succeed? The question has given postwar historians no peace.
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?
Yellow oily paper with writing

Smell, History, and Heritage

Smell’s diffuse nature requires crossing the boundaries of several subfields within the historical discipline, but also moving beyond the boundaries of history alone.
Illustration of T. Thomas Fortune

Abolition Democracy’s Forgotten Founder

While W. E. B. Du Bois praised an expanding penitentiary system, T. Thomas Fortune called for investment in education and a multiracial, working-class movement.
Illustration of Cedric Robinson by Joe Ciardiello.

Cedric Robinson’s Radical Democracy

Rejecting the resignation of the 1970s and ’80s, Robinson found in the disinvested ruins of the city a new egalitarian form of politics.
Former President Donald Trump in Selma, North Carolina

The Historians Take a First Crack at Donald J. Trump

On the promises and perils of very recent history.
Cover of "Liberty Is Sweet," featuring a painting of a man holding a gun to two soldiers on horseback.

Fighting the American Revolution

An interview with Woody Holton on his new book, "Liberty is Sweet."

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