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Vaccination team member giving a cholera vaccine in Cerca Carvajal, 2013.

Cholera and the Roots of Public Health

… infection, caused by Vibrio cholerae, caused patients’ bodies to waste away in a matter of hours due to sudden … the poor’s living conditions. In Great Britain, Poor Law Commissioner Edwin Chadwick, from the miasma school, began … sewer design for stopping the spread. One point had become especially clear: sanitation was key to creating a …

The United States, China, and the Money Question

… rights issues, others Chinese foreign policy, but the most common rhetorical barbs tie back to trade and currency. This … silver dollars flowed through the arteries of global commerce in the 18 th and 19 th centuries. In the United … of the U.S. than to push their commerce to the East Indies as fast and as far as it will go.” Merchants listened …

Media and Politics in the Age of Trump

… will likely preoccupy future historians for years to come. While a number of factors contributed to his … The Republican Presidential Debates brought in record audiences. The news media’s obsession with Trump is … expansive view of the First Amendment that protected the audience’s positive right to information as much as …
man with a gun in a holster

Top Ten Origins: Gun Regulation

… the British military. Yet, they also inherited the English common law tradition of regulating arms. English statutes … security and linked bearing arms to civic duty. Despite its common invocation today by gun rights advocates as the … by adopting new inventions without being convinced of their superiority.” The government would not purchase weapons from …
Logo for "Canada 150".

Canada 150: Coming Home

… leaders from Métis artist Christi Belcourt to Anishinaabe comedian Ryan McMahon have pointed out that the past 150 … nations. Front and back of the Indian Chiefs Medal, commemorating Treaties 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7. Canada’s inability … country’s proximity to the United States has invited moral comparisons since its very inception: a peaceful …
Isaac W. Williams (front) in a file photo from the 1960s.

Still Fighting the Civil War in South Carolina

… "has nothing to do with slavery."  He proposes that it is a commemoration of South Carolinians who "stood up for their … Americans in Charleston also built a cemetery for Union soldiers who had died as prisoners of war, and they came by the thousands to …
A photo of Al Gore I\in Manchester, New Hampshire, campaigning for President of the United States in 1999

The Case of the Disappearing Vice President

… votes for president. But he looked like a backwoods ruffian compared with the venerable John Quincy Adams. So elite … vice president. Ira Chernus is a professor of religious studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder and a writer …
John D. Rockefeller in 1914.

Bill Gates — Another Rockefeller or Another Ford?

… Americans have hated political and economic bullies. "Free competition" has always been our rallying cry and the … their entrepreneurship survive in the face of ruthless competition? Free competition meant the opportunity for all Americans to build …
Garden District of New Orleans.

Learning to Dance With the French

… French Louisianians like myself no longer have much in common with our cousins in Paris. But in 1803, following the … the governor learned to loosen his collar a little, to compromise, to speak French, and to practice crafty … New Orleans family of Clarisse Duralde and went on to become the first democratically chosen leader of Louisiana. …
A Nuclear Power Plant in the Untied Kingdom against a blue sky.

How Green Is the Atom?

The Past–and Future–of Nuclear Energy in the United States
… industry representatives, but many environmentalists have come to see nuclear power as key to end world dependence on … advantage in world markets. ADVANCE will provide huge subsidies in the effort to rejuvenate the U.S. industry. That … has always required significant direct and indirect subsidies, loans, and even  limits on its accident liabilities to …
North Korea's prime minister Kim Il-sung and China's premier Zhou Enlai tour Beijing in 1958.

China Holds the Key to the North Korea Problem

… As the international community struggles to respond effectively to the missile … intentions of its founder’s to allow each great power a comprehensive veto over any international action that might … and President Franklin D. Roosevelt did not agree on the composition or role of the future organizations executive …
Cover of A Short History of Celebrity by Fred Inglis.

A Short History of Celebrity

Review of A Short History of Celebrity, by Fred Inglis (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2010)
… Celebrity .  Fred Inglis, Emeritus Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Sheffield, is the author of more … of intense familiarity with distance.  This is the "compound" that makes the celebrity sacred in modern society: … simultaneously invests her/him with the "remoteness of the supernatural" (10-11, 156).    Inglis' narrative of the …
A 1960s photo of a hallway inside the Philadelphia County Prison.

Have We Learned Nothing About Prisons?

… the world, trailing only Russia. The prison industry has become big business: billions of dollars are being spent on … reprisals and crackdowns on inmate reading material became common. Television replaced reading as the preferred source …
"The Magnet Citizenship" March 1917 cartoon by Henry Mayer - Moving Picture Weekly (1915-1920)

U.S. Citizenship Is Based on Principles, Not Heritage

… American values. "Be Americans First," he beseeches his audiences, meaning be "western."   But Tancredo misunderstands … principles.  The Congress hoped to avoid the "bigotry, superstition and deep-rooted prejudice" that characterized …
Chartwell, the country estate of Winston Churchill

By Invitation Only

Review of The Long Weekend: Life in the English Country House, 1918-1939, by Adrian Tinniswood New York: Basic Books, 2016
… instance, crossed the Atlantic and settled in England, becoming members of the English aristocracy and elite British … peers, Tinniswood generally accepts that the lords and ladies who owned these country houses were benevolent …
Electoral college results from the 2008 presidential election.

Break Up the States?

… differences? Opponents of Electoral College reform commonly respond that the federal government should not … geographic and population apportionment safeguards smaller communities’ important interests. It’s an argument as old as … president, John Tyler, wrote a set of resolutions for his community, tiny James City County in Tidewater Virginia, …
Karzai with former US President George W. Bush and wife Laura Bush at Camp David in 2007.

Keep Karzai in the Loop

… shown the agreement, he felt presented with a fait accompli and refused to consent.   Believing that he had been …
Cover of Fears of a Setting Sun: The Disillusionment of America's Founders by Dennis C. Rasmussen

Such a Disappointment

Review of Fears of a Setting Sun: The Disillusionment of America’s Founders, by Dennis C. Rasmussen (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2021)
… by the idea that the present seems pretty terrible in comparison with the past, even if that past is mythic or not … thing, and Rasmussen pairs each founder with a particular complaint. For Washington, it was partisanship. Even as he … lived longer he might have only grown gloomier. It probably comes as less of a surprise that John Adams disapproved. He …
1942 photo of an American flag.

The Changing Symbolism of Old Glory

… Blue are also in fashion. The World Series in New York, the Super Bowl in New Orleans, and the Winter Olympics in Salt … Although the United States has often wavered from that commitment, the tragic events of Sept. 11 compel us to return to it, more today than ever before. Few …
The Thinker by Auguste Rodin

Graduate Students Discuss Public Intellectualism

… as the case might be. If we really want to engage the community with historical thinking, a better model might be … facilitator who makes the past relatable to a broad audience. While most academics may not have access to a … television channels to hundreds, as well as thousands of websites and blogs, means that it may be a mistake to refer …
Image of T2 Atomic Demolition Munition from the 1950s.

The Test-Ban Treaty and the Cold War’s Lessons

… When U.S. senators voted to reject the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, they took a giant step … and the Cold War produced a massive arms race. Soon both superpowers created even more devastating hydrogen bombs. By … over Russian territory, those hopes faded. But they did not die. Long before President Clinton signed the Comprehensive …

Time It Was: 1968 Around the World

… I’ve read about it, 1968 was quite a year. Writers have compared it to the most dramatic moments in modern history— … against the Vietnam War in Washington, D.C. ( left ). A soldier standing guard in Washington, D.C. after riots … stone and concrete plaza awash with blood and to the bodies stacked in adjacent building hallways. The army …
Some of the subjects in the Guatemalan experiments

The Guatemala Inoculation Experiments

… around 1,500 people in Guatemala—including prisoners, soldiers, prostitutes, psychiatric patients, and children—were enrolled without consent in unethical studies related to the testing and treatment of sexually … and the Pan American Sanitary Bureau (which would later become the Pan American Health Organization) financed and …