Search Results

Displaying 673 - 696 of 887
book cover of Empire of Cotton - A Global History

Top Ten Origins: Summer 2018 Must Reads

… while you stay out of the heat? I can help you. Analyzing and teaching books are large components of my job, and, … Arc of Justice follows the murder trial of Ossian Sweet, an African American doctor who bought a house in an all-white … an African American teenager named Latasha Harlins in South Central Los Angeles. A jury later convicted Du of …
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Moroni3a07131u.jpg

Joseph Smith Discovers the Gold Plates

… York.  Smith traveled to the hill in question the next day and uncovered gold plates on which he claimed were written … scripture by over 17 million worldwide members of the faith and has been translated into more than 100 languages. Even … skewered in popular culture, e.g., the television show South Park . But 200 years later, the story of how the Book …
Valerie Plame in 2008.

A Dirty–and Deadly–Trick

… security. In the long list of presidential misdeeds and scandals, this one stands out. It’s the first time a president … whether Saddam Hussein had tried to buy uranium from that African country. Revealing her identity was a clumsy attempt …
Sir Christopher Wren

The Society That Started It All: The Origins of Modern Science

Review of The Royal Society and the Invention of Modern Science, by Adrian Tinniswood (New York: Basic Books, 2019.)
… Adrian Tinniswood begins The Royal Society and the Invention of Modern Science by describing … in for concentrated scrutiny. For example, Sir Robert Southwell brought his unicorn horn to a meeting in 1661. An … scathing ridicule from clergymen-scientists, such as Robert South, and even from contemporary authors, like Jonathan …
The last Soviet forces leave Afghanistan via Friendship Bridge in February of 1989

What They Left Behind: The Soviet Union in Afghanistan

… Afghanistan to stabilize the pro-Soviet Afghan government and offer support in its fight with rebel forces. After … Kabul. Of the luxury high-rise buildings in Kabul, a South African urban planner, Jolyon Leslie, recently said, “ …
Three Young White Men and a Black Woman (1632) by Christiaen van Couwenbergh.

A Question of Power, Not Sex

… The accusations have sent shock waves through the media and the 25,000 souls who belong to New Birth Baptist Church … condemned Bishop Eddie Long’s virulently anti-gay theology and political activism and have called for a black church …  The sexual assault of incarcerated men, disproportionately African American, is more often a source of jokes than a …
members of the Tea Party holding signs

The Great American Debate Recommences

… This country began with a fierce debate, and it does not appear to be over. The folks rallying to the … we think of it, the movement is as American as apple pie. And its followers think so too, calling themselves … That was why it was called a confederacy. (The Southern states, equally determined to protect states …
Jackie Robinson

Top Ten Origins: The World Series

… played annually since 1903 (with two exceptions in 1904 and 1994). Debates over which are the “greatest” of these … Dodgers roster and broke the “color barrier” that prevented African-Americans (and dark-skinned Latinos) from playing in … Series. Their manager, Cito Gaston, was also the first African-American to both manage in and win a World Series. …
1943 poster for the Allies of World War II--two years before the founding of the United Nations.

The UN Follows the League’s Long Trail to Impotence

… the UN eerily resembles the League of Nations of the 1920s and 1930s. By allowing North Korea to flout international nuclear norms, permitting genocide in Darfur, and watching Iraq crumble into chaos, the UN’s record is as … of its nuclear program, the UN has placed a low priority on Africa. The Sudanese government has been pursuing a policy …
Albert Bierstadt, Mount Corcoran, c. 1876-1877, oil on canvas

Silent Spring Revolution, a Conversation with Douglas Brinkley

… New York Times bestselling author and acclaimed presidential historian Douglas Brinkley talks … Lake in Oregon, or Mesa Verde in Colorado, or Wind Cave in South Dakota, went to Congress, they got passed and moved to … that an eel in a Pennsylvania River had made a journey from Africa. Everybody writes about bird migration, what about …
The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks' declaration from Flag Day 1919 that forbade membership in the organization to anarchists, Industrial Workers of the World, Bolsheviks, and other organizations perceived as unpatriotic.

Sanitizing American Tradition

Review of Inventing American Tradition: From the Mayflower to Cinco de Mayo, by Jack David Eller (London: Reaktion Books, 2018)
… Thanksgiving was little more than a harvest festival , and that the morally conservative Puritans would have eschewed the indulgence and recreation that characterizes the holiday today. In … 1942. Readers will learn about Memorial Day’s origin as a Southern celebration of Confederate veterans , only later to …
The 3rd Tipperary Brigade of the Old IRA, pictured during the early 1920s.

100 Years of Irish Independence and Division

… On December 6, 1922, Ireland’s struggle for independence from the United Kingdom … Still, violence continued in both the north and the south. In Belfast, sectarian violence killed approximately … had to flee their homes, many seeking refuge in the south.   The war between England and Ireland continued until …
man with a gun in a holster

Top Ten Origins: Gun Regulation

… This month marks the first anniversary of the Parkland shooting, when a gunman killed 17 students and staff … rights and gun control. The rights—or the lack thereof—of African Americans first brought the Second Amendment to the … Cruikshank  (1876), which ruled that states could prohibit African Americans from keeping arms because the Second …
a couple in a wedding dress and soldier dress uniform

Between Two Worlds: Jewish War Brides After the Holocaust

… the wake of the Holocaust, many Jewish survivors, community and religious leaders, and Allied soldiers viewed marriage … have. So I look at women who and men who come from North Africa and all over Europe, who meet American, British and … depending on whether you're in Italy, Northern France, southern France, Germany, Belgium, into encounter. Where are …
A view of the World Trade Center in New York City

Responding to Terror: No Good Choices

… In its brutality and horror, the World Trade Center attack of September 11 outmatched Pearl Harbor. Because it did so, our grief and anger are settling into a cold rage against whoever … finally ended by a precipitate French retreat from North Africa. On the other side of the argument about what we are …
"The Bosses of the Senate" (1889). Reformers like the cartoonist Joseph Keppler depicted the Senate as controlled by the giant moneybags, who represented the nation's financial trusts and monopolies.

The Dreary Science Meets Politics

… McCain has made it clear that, previous positions notwithstanding, he has now embraced the Republican economic … orthodoxy: eliminate regulation, cut taxes on corporations and the wealthy, and the free and unfettered market will … most importantly the 1886 decision in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, the Supreme Court used the 14th …
King Capital, caricature by the Slovenian graphic artist and illustrator Hinko Smrekar (first half of the 20th century).

Why Business Loves Laissez Faire

… McCain has made it clear that, previous positions notwithstanding, he has now embraced the Republican economic … orthodoxy: eliminate regulation, cut taxes on corporations and the wealthy, and the free and unfettered market will … most importantly the 1886 decision in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, the Supreme Court used the 14th …
The Course of Empire: Destruction, Painted by Thomas Cole, depicts a highly dramatic, catastrophic image of Rome's end.

Political Economy in the Late Roman Empire

Review of The Tragedy of Empire: From Constantine to The Destruction of Roman Italy, by Michael Kulikowski (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019)
… or perhaps a date, like “410” or “476.” In popular culture and imagination, the fall of the Roman Empire takes on the … Edward Gibbon’s famous eighteenth century work, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire . Scholarship on this period, … in the Western Empire (parts of Western Europe and Northern Africa) though not in the East (the Eastern Balkans, …
Protestors against the U.S. Trump administration voice their commitment to the world's dispossessed.

The Politics of Refugee Aid in America’s “Short Century”

Review of Benevolent Empire: U.S. Power, Humanitarianism, and the World's Dispossessed , by Stephen R. Porter Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017.
… R. Porter’s Benevolent Empire: U.S. Power, Humanitarianism, and the World’s Dispossessed comes at a time that many … in the racial and economic tensions of America’s Jim Crow south, and how the haphazard work of an overburdened private … of a Hungarian student at an all-black university in South Carolina. The final two chapters extend the question …
neon sign that says Quiz with question marks around it

History Teaching: Still Crazy After All These Years

… a different result. So take the following history test and find out if your ideas about our kids and what they know about history are crazy or not. Identify … fine. But those with specialties in medieval, European and African history failed miserably when confronted by items …
The BBC World Service podcast Witness brings listeners daily podcast shorts on key events in history, described first-hand by the individuals who lived through them.

Best in History Online: BBC's Witness Podcast

… podcast shorts on key events in history, described first-hand by the individuals who lived through them. Each episode … moment, person, or topic in history, using interviews and audio from the BBC archive and readings of historical … podcast episodes and videos on particular themes such as African history, science, music, and war. The podcast is …
Portrait of Martin Luther

Martin Luther and the Reformation

… Playmobil figures of Luther, Luther Christmas ornaments, and tote bags decorated with his image all focus attention … for 25 years. Vasco da Gama and his crew had reached south Asia nearly two decades earlier. Within two years, … Walter Raleigh assured local people in sixteenth-century South America that the Protestant English were far better, …
Taliban fighters patrol the streets of Kabul in August, 2021.

Who are the Taliban?

… Their stunning victory in August 2021 over American and allied forces—arguably the most powerful military … of veterans of the jihad gathered in Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan. These men had spent their lives … forceful implementation of religious orthodoxy and gender apartheid. … Who are the Taliban? … Robert Crews … Features …