Flee North by Scott Shane is a riveting account of the extraordinary abolitionist, liberator, and writer Thomas Smallwood, who bought his own freedom, led hundreds out of slavery, and named the Underground Railroad. Read or listen to an excerpt about the incredible...
by Nev March The Spanish Diplomat’s Secret, the third book in my Captain Jim and Lady Diana series, is set aboard an 1894 steamship, the Royal Mail Ship (RMS) Etruria. Why the Etruria? As I researched the ship—and her sister ship the Umbria—I learned about their...
by Tom Clavin The Last Hill by Bob Drury and yours truly covers the dramatic campaigns of the 2nd Ranger Battalion in the summer and fall of 1944, culminating in the assault on Hill 400, the gateway to Germany. In this excerpt, the hill has been taken, but the...
by Jack Kelly It was said about Benedict Arnold that he never did anything by halves. Was he a traitor? Yes. But not just any traitor. He was the renegade of all renegades, the man whose name became a synonym for treason, the Judas Iscariot of American history....
by Uri Kaufman Some years, like 1776 and 1939, need no introduction; their reputations travel before them. For Israelis, 1967 is enshrined in national memory as the year they triumphed over their enemies in six days. Its evil twin is 1973, the year it suffered a...
by Tom Clavin This year is the 150th anniversary of the taking of one of the most famous photographs of the American West, an image of a natural feature known as the Mount of the Holy Cross. This was accomplished during an expedition led by two remarkable 19th-century...
My JAH article âBridging Borders,â much like my book Cross-Border Cosmopolitans: The Making of a Pan-African North America (UNC Press, 2023), is concerned with a fundamental historiographical question: How can historians in the twenty-first century reimagine...
In 1937, the British monarchy was in a state of turmoil. The previous king, Edward VIII, had abdicated the throne, leaving his unprepared and terrified brother Bertie to become George VI, surrounded by a gaggle of courtiers and politicians who barely thought him up to...
This piece is a response to our Call for Submissions, Ending the Forgotten War: The Korean War Armistice at Seventy. For our submission guidelines, click here. On July 27, 1953, delegates from the United Nations and North Korea signed the Korean War Armistice...
The twentieth anniversary of the Iraq War provides an important opportunity to pierce the fog of âshock and awe,â in favor of sober, measured reflection. Especially as historians of the United Statesâas thinkers and teachersâit remains intellectually,...
by Tom Clavin On July 25, 1918, Jay Zeamer was born. Zeamer is the main character of Lucky 666, a gripping World War II story written by Bob Drury and yours truly. His birthday is the same day as mine, but we’re many years apart: Were he still alive, Zeamer would be...
by Allison Montclair Allison Montclair’s beloved Sparks & Bainbridge Mystery series is a fun read for all mystery lovers, however, the events are very much rooted in history. Montclair heavily researches the post-WWII era while writing this series. Below is an...
Digital history projects not only contribute to scholarly debates by approaching familiar questions from new angles, but they also offer one of the best ways to introduce primary sources into the classroom. Think of it this way: your students would probably groan in...
Dickey Chapelle got her story by any means necessary. Sometimes that involved being in the very thick of war. The following is a harrowing excerpt from First to the Front by Lorissa Rinehart, covering Chapelle’s time aboard the Samaritan, a hospital ship bound for Iwo...
by J. Randy Taraborrelli In July 1964, Jackie Kennedy visited her mother and stepfather, Janet and Hugh Auchincloss, at the family’s homestead, Hammersmith Farm in Newport. She was suffering greatly. It had been just eight months since she witnessed the murder of her...
U.S. President George W. Bush (at podium) discusses his plan for peace in the Middle East as National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice (left), Secretary of State Colin Powell (center), and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (right) stand by his side in the White...
by Lorissa Rinehart The French had dropped a veritable drag net across the country to keep the world from learning about the Algerian War of Independence. The colonial government censored airwaves and telegraph wires for any information about the conflict. Razor wire...
The American Civil War is a remarkably well-documented conflict, especially on the U.S. side, fought by a highly literate population and overseen by a central government committed to conscientious record keeping. Wartime petitions from soldiersâ family members and...