History

"Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history." — George Bernard Shaw

The Art of Dissent
A documentary filmmaker and historian discusses his new film about Czech dissidents under the communist regime.
James Dean Le SueurJul 11, 2020
Bending Toward the Storm: On Andy Horowitz’s “Katrina: A History, 1915–2015”
Scott Stern reviews a new book that unpacks New Orleans’s history of mishandling storm readiness.
Scott W. SternJul 10, 2020
- History
- Science & Technology
The Only One Left: A Conversation with James Lloydovich Patterson About Grigori Aleksandrov’s “Circus”
Sasha Razor interviews James Lloydovich Patterson, the son of an African American father and a Soviet mother who became a Soviet actor and author.
Sasha RazorJul 7, 2020
A Constitution, If You Can Keep It
Stephen Rohde looks at Ellis Cose’s “Democracy, If We Can Keep It: The ACLU’s 100-Year Fight for Rights in America.”
Stephen RohdeJul 5, 2020
Bauhaus STEAMpunks and a Crisis-Based Humanities
Justus Nieland looks at two recent books on László Moholy-Nagy and György Kepes.
Justus NielandJun 27, 2020
- Art & Architecture
- History
Cinema’s First Epidemic: From Contagious Twitching to Convulsive Laughter
Maggie Hennefeld explores epidemics in early slapstick: as subject, as context, and as commodity.
Maggie HennefeldJun 23, 2020
Her Sentimental Properties
White women have trafficked in Black women’s milk.
Sarah MesleJun 22, 2020
A Technology of Manifest Destiny: Sam Colt’s Revolver
Historian of technology Lee Vinsel reviews Jim Rasenberger’s new book, “Revolver: Sam Colt and the Six-Shooter That Changed America.”
Lee VinselJun 22, 2020
- History
- Science & Technology
Declassified: An Interview with Jessica Pearce Rotondi
Meredith Maran talks to writer Jessica Pearce Rotondi about unresolved grief, hidden political histories, and her debut book, “What We Inherit.”
Meredith MaranJun 12, 2020
Forgotten Movie Royalty
A new biography of early cinema’s first family, the Costellos.
Chris YogerstJun 12, 2020
A Different Civil War in the Southwest
A riveting new book shows how the Civil War in the West was both strategically important and lacking in the moral contours of the broader war.
Sam KleinerJun 10, 2020
- History
- Politics
The Footmen of Liberalism
An unauthorized history of the world’s most vaunted digest of power shows the fatal assumptions within its magisterial voice.
Travis DiehlMay 27, 2020