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Obama wore Isabel Toledo clothes made of St. Gallen Embroidery to the 2009 presidential inauguration.

Is Michelle Obama the Ultimate Insider?

… begins to fade, there’s a race among critics to find a compelling Rasputin or a group of gray eminences pulling the … in search of scapegoats in the past often looked to first ladies as the causes of their husband’s difficulties. However … very well be hers. Kenneth Weisbrode is a historian at the European University Institute and the author of The Atlantic …
The Nature of Childhood: An Environmental History of Growing Up in America since 1865 Book Cover

Play, Paranoia, and American Childhood in the Great Outdoors

Review of The Nature of Childhood: An Environmental History of Growing Up in America since 1865, by Pamela Riney-Kehrberg (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2014)
… Places, backyards, and basements filled with televisions, computers, and Playstations. Riney-Kehrberg describes how … of newspapers, periodicals, television programs, films, websites, and published works to tell her story, but she … War Two. Fear is also a significant topic in cultural studies, sociology, and psychology. For the historian of modern …

Child Kidnapping in America

… the money). This refusal brought him a torrent of negative commentary and helped to define for the future what … children. At the same time, the frantic search for remedies, and the wide media fascination for these cases, has … taken by parents and those who had run away. At various points in the 1980s, Americans were led to believe that as …

The Ethiopian Civil War in Tigray

… stoking its fires long after they should have burned out. Some of the prime minister’s detractors have labeled him a … peace. At his inaugural ceremony in 2018, he counseled a complete break with the past forms of governance that were … a report in April 2021 maintaining that Eritrean soldiers fighting with Ethiopia had killed hundreds of Tigrayan …
Fidel Castro in 1959

Easing Up on Cuba

… ones, to improve relations. That means, end the embargo. So what is this embargo, and why do we have it? It has a … the Cold War was at its peak, and the Soviet Union had become Cuba’s patron, pouring billions annually into its … the Soviet Union has disappeared, and Russia stopped subsidies to Cuba in 1991. Communism still exists in the world, …
“The great financier, or British economy for the years 1763, 1764, 1765.” This British cartoon depicts the American colonies as a Native American woman, as juxtaposed to British officials and Britannia (far right), demonstrating the disconnect between the colonies and the metropole even though the colonists thought of themselves as full British subjects.

The Old Informing the New

Review of Rethinking America: From Empire to Republic, by John M. Murrin (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018)
… American Revolution , and the Early American Republic. This compilation gathers together some of his important essays published or delivered between … is his discussion of “Anglicization.” Rather than becoming less and less British as the 17th and 18th centuries …
U.S. soldiers walking across a field during the Vietnam War.

A New War Like — Vietnam?

… the first stage of the air war against the Taliban regime completed, the United States now enters a more difficult and dangerous phase of combat. Repeatedly, President Bush has warned that the fight … will not resemble the previous conflicts with Iraq and in Kosovo. But he has left unsaid, in what is no doubt a …
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony

Elizabeth Cady Stanton: Wife, Mother, Revolutionary Thinker

… rights activist, was born. Stanton is most closely associated with advocating the right to vote for women and … my daughter, I wish you were a boy!” Whether he meant the comment as an affront or as a statement on the injustice … life, writing books, giving speeches, and campaigning. She died on October 26, 1902, eighteen years before the passage …
Fully lit Menorah

Chanukah Candles Shed Light on Mideast Conflict

… army of foreign occupiers. I learned that today's Israeli soldiers, like the Maccabees, were fighting for Jewish … Surely they know that nothing brings people together like a common enemy. But in the United States, the "rally round the …
Rick Santorum at prayer, 2012

Rick Santorum and Fundamentalist Catholicism

… in the polls among GOP voters precisely because he is so comfortable mixing politics and religion. He presents a … the kind of bigotry American Catholics have tried to overcome. What may be less familiar is that Santorum’s brand of …
Print of "The Epiphany of the New Antichrist" by Romeyn de Hooghe.

The Myth of the Jewish Antichrist: Falwell Stumbles Badly

… The upcoming millennium is not just about computers; it’s also … of all Americans and Jews in particular. Falwell told an audience in Kingsport, Tenn., that the Antichrist was probably … ought to take note — and to worry. Andrew Gow teaches European history at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, …
Crowds outside the Bank of United States in New York after its failure in 1931.

Blame It All on Unintended Consequences

… or not. Usually they move in different directions, but sometimes they converge to produce disasters like the one … consequences to explain how individual ambition served the common good. It’s not from the benevolence of the butcher, … unintended consequence of their self interest, mediated by competition, was better and cheaper meat, beer and bread. …
 Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet, by John G. Turner book Cover.

He Led His People Into the Desert

Review of Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet, by John G. Turner (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2012)
… Young: Pioneer Prophet , John G. Turner, religious studies professor at George Mason University, seeks to lay bare … of Young's evolution as a leader brings the full complexity of his character into focus.  Upon his ascension … of Mormonism's history: racism and colonialism.  As Turner points out, the vast majority of Mormon converts in the …
Advertisement for DDT featured in Time Magazine, June 30, 1947. This image illustrates the rosy reputation that pesticides enjoyed before the publication of Silent Spring.

A World Drenched with Pesticides: Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring

… Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring shocked the American public when it was … plants, while also accumulating in water , soil, and the bodies of fish, birds, and people.  Rachel Carson devoted her … on chemical over-use. While the public, USDA, chemical companies , and farmers embraced pesticides with a fervor …
Cover of The Rise and Fall of Modern American Conservatism: A Short History by David Farber.

The Far Right Stuff

Review of The Rise and Fall of Modern Conservatism, by David Farber (Princeton University Press, 2010)
… For political junkies and arm-chair pundits, this is the sort of book that you toss down in the middle of a table with friends and fight over.  I mean that as a high compliment, since there are far too many books out there, … clung to notions of family, tradition, and institutional obedience that were alternately nostalgic and retrograde. …
Heads of delegations at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP21), which led to the signing of the Paris Agreement.

Looking for a Common Language at Copenhagen

So much emphasis about the global summit at Copenhagen has … of solving a problem facing the entire world, the summit’s composition best resembles a hodgepodge of national-or what … just don’t change. Kenneth Weisbrode is a historian at the European University Institute and the author of The Atlantic …
LA 92, directed by Dan Lindsay, T.J. Martin

At the Movies: LA 92: The Right to be Angry

… the hope of providing fresh insight on six days of civil disobedience that brought Los Angeles, California to a standstill … distraught business owners next to coverage of families and communities reeling from extrajudicial violence runs …
John Muir, the founder of the Sierra Club.

Conservation — An American, and Republican, Tradition

… last spring, dismissed conservation as “a sign of personal virtue, but not a sufficient basis for a sound comprehensive energy policy,” he turned his back on a major … D. Keith Naylor is an associate professor of religious studies at Occidental College in Los Angeles and a writer for …
President George W. Bush

Policies for the Fearful: Rollback Then, Regime Change Now

… Council in 1950, declared the importance of pushing the Soviet Union back from those territories conquered in the … the test of the first Soviet atomic weapon in 1949. The combination of the Soviet Union’s atomic weapons and its … force to reorder the world. Michael Richards teaches modern European and world history at Sweet Briar College in …
Cover of Robert Clifton Weaver and the American City The Life and Times of an Urban Reformer by Wendell E. Pritchett.

Invisible Man

Review of Robert Clifton Weaver and the American City: The Life and Times of an Urban Reformer , by Wendell E. Pritchett (University of Chicago Press, 2008)
… the idea of a color-blind America. Media pundits and social commentators nationwide claimed that Obama's election … success. History, however, might prove otherwise.  As we come to the end of the first decade of the twenty-first …
A rendering of the Battle of Fort Pillow, also known as the Fort Pillow Massacre, which was fought on April 12, 1864 in Tennessee.  It ended with a massacre by Confederate soldiers of at least one hundred surrendered black troops serving the Union, exemplifying one of the Civil War's transgressions of the norms of warfare.

The American Civil War, Then and Now

Review of The War that Forged a Nation: Why the Civil War Still Matters, by James McPherson (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015)
Coming to terms with the American Civil War is no easy task. … New historical estimates put the death toll at 750,000 soldiers, or 2.4% of the American population in 1860, which … McPherson gives much credit to their agency, he also points out that the primary mechanism of liberation for most …
Minaret Islam Khoja in Khiva

A Postcard from Khiva, Uzbekistan

… of Samarkand, and those passengers eager to explore the medieval monuments gather their bags and exit the train. Back … history. The train stops in Urgench, a quiet and comparatively modern city of about 150,000 people. Exiting … revolved around the sun; the physician Ibn Sina, known in Europe as Avicenna, whose Canon of Medicine represented the …
Ronald Reagan toasting at a State Dinner during his presidency.

Behind the Reagan Myths, a Mediocre Presidency

… His role in ending the Cold War was less important than the Soviet Union’s collapse from internal strains. He was a … number of letters that prove he was no dummy. A historian’s complaint, however, is larger than chagrin at the number of … nation to alter its perceptions, values and policies. The comfortable old ways will no longer do. Reagan had an …