by Brad Meltzer and Josh Mensch Belmont, New HampshireSeptember 1960 New York Daily News Archive/New York Daily News via Getty Images Richard Pavlick of Belmont, New Hampshire, really cares about flags. American flags, that is. When they’re hung, where they’re...
In Custodians of Wonder, Eliot Stein takes a vivid look at 10 astonishing people who are maintaining some of the world’s oldest and rarest cultural traditions. Read on for an introductory excerpt from the book. A late 19th century example of Burano lace. Courtesty of...
Suspense author Sharon Short shares the rich history behind Middle Island, the real-life location that inspired her new novel, Trouble Island. Middle Island, Lake Eerie, Ontario, Canada. Photo courtesy Wikipedia Commons. Years ago, I accompanied one of my daughters on...
Process invites proposals and submissions for an upcoming series on sensory history. We are open to a variety of themes relating to sensory history as both a methodology and a field and its intersections with various subfields of U.S. history, including histories of...
by Lydia Reeder Harriot Kezia Hunt, from a 1910 publication. (Public domain, Wikimedia Images.) For two days, on June 27 and 28, 1860, Dr. Harriot Kezia Hunt’s Boston home teemed with activity. Housemaids arranged dozens of flowers—roses, lilies, chrysanthemums,...
by The History Reader Shopping for any history-loving friends? Below is our holiday gift guide with our favorite books of 2024! The Cold Crematorium by József Debreczeni First published in Hungarian in 1950, The Cold Crematorium was never translated into a world...
Four Against the West by Joe Pappalardo is a thrilling true saga of legendary Texas figure Judge Roy Bean and his brothers―and their violent adventures in Wild West America. Read on for a chapter excerpt from Four Against the West that focuses on the legendary...
The Duchess of Windsor. Attributed to Angela Laviosa. Courtesy of Wikipedia. In Her Lotus Year: China, the Roaring Twenties, and the Making of Wallis Simpson, New York Times bestselling author Paul French examines a controversial and revealing period in the early life...
AUGUST 31, 2006. JENA, LOUISIANA. Example of a hanging tree in Dallas, Texas. Photo taken by Phoebe L. Friedman. In the morning light, three nooses hung ominously from a giant oak tree’s leafy branches outside Jena High School. There had been an unspoken rule. A...
Nothing motivates me to write as much as anger. My June 2024 Journal of American History article, ââBring Moneyâ: The Environmental Protection Agency, Sewer Infrastructure, and the Racialized Geography of the United States,â is a case in point. For quite some...
Illustration of Socrates, in a basket, based on Aristophanes’s The Clouds. Was Socrates a real person? is one of the most googled questions about perhaps the most important philosopher in history. Socrates’s existence as a historical figure is, however, universally...
Process invites proposals and submissions for an upcoming series on the elderly in U.S. history. While there is a vast array of histories relating to youth culture, children, and young adults in the United States, there are fewer comparable studies on the history of...
Boundaries of the lost state of Franklin. Wikimedia Public Domain. It’s one of many tales of the founding of America. Settlers from England were exploring more and more of the New World, and as they did, they set up new communities far from the comfort of home. We...
by Adriana Allegri The Lebensborn Naming Ceremony from Master Race by Catrine Clay and Michael Leapman (1995). When I first learned about Hochland Home, the setting for The Sunflower House, it seemed like the stuff of dystopian science fiction. Few people knew about...
This week sees the publication of my new book, Bandit Heaven: The Hole-in-the-Wall Gangs and the Final Chapter of the Wild West. The main characters are Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but unlike the classic movie, there is also emphasis on a wide range of...
The emergence of student loan debt in the late 1960s can be situated within a broader shift towards neoliberal governance, which relies on market incorporation as a means of providing access to basic social provisions, like housing, health care, and education. One way...
Commander Winfield Scott Schley (4th from left) and men who rescued Greely Expedition survivors (Public domain, Wikimedia Images) In 1881, Cdr. Winfield Scott Schley was at the Charlestown Navy Yard reading a newspaper article about the US Army Signal Corps’ ambitious...
William A. Pinkerton with railroad special agents Pat Connell (left) and Sam Finley (right) from the Library of Congress. Even if you’ve only watched a handful of “Wild West” films or TV shows, you’ve probably encountered the Pinkertons. These hired guns are often...