History

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

• It’s the Emotions, Stupid

  "How did the ideals of 1789 … morph into the horrors of 1793, steeped in blood, violence, and paranoia?"

  Robert ZaretskyJan 12, 2015

  • History

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  James Laughlin’s New Directions

  By founding New Directions Books, James Laughlin shaped an entire chanel of literary history.

  Greg BarnhiselJan 4, 2015

  • Biography & Autobiography

  • History

• Perpetual War for a Perpetual Piece (of the Action)

  The bad news from one of the finest national security journalists working today.

  Zach DorfmanDec 17, 2014

  • History

  • Politics

• Xinjiang Stories

  Uyghur history as everyman’s history.

  Nile GreenDec 3, 2014

  • Around the World

  • History

• 

  Over Here, over Here: Books on World War I Everywhere

  2014 saw a bumper crop in World War I commemorations.

  Robert ZaretskyNov 23, 2014

  • History

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  1916 Revisited

  Dublin's Easter Rising

  Robert CreminsNov 15, 2014

  • History

• Lovely Bones: The Contested Invention of the Unknown Soldier

  Alessandro Carrera on the mysteries of mourning, the Unknown Soldier, and the scholarship of Laura Wittman.

  Alessandro CarreraNov 13, 2014

  • History

• Casaubon’s Humanities

  James Turner’s Philology makes a case for the comparative mode that gave birth to the modern humanities — but what does his argument say for the state of the humanities now?

  Scott SpillmanNov 11, 2014

  • History

  • Philosophy & Religion

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  The Love Letters of Heinrich Himmler

  "The Decent One" heralds a new kind of Holocaust documentary, one made by a documentarian two generations removed from the original horror, one that dares to look at a perpetrator with the assumption that he is not an animal or a monster but a human being.

  Laurie WinerOct 29, 2014

  • History

• 

  “Of the making of many books there is no end”: Remembering Michael Kammen, the Professor of Paradox

  A tribute to the great historian Michael Kammen, written by one of his closest colleagues and friends.

  Douglas GreenbergOct 26, 2014

  • History

  • Memoir & Essay

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  19th Century Paris: Terrorism's Training Ground

  1894 marked an exceptional harvest of one of the most notable isms to take root in French soil: anarchism.

  Robert ZaretskyOct 21, 2014

  • History

  • Politics

• Camp David: The Past and Future of Peace

  Israelis, Egyptians, and Americans were secluded at Camp David for 13 painstaking, frustrating, and very nearly fruitless days in September 1978.

  Max StrasserOct 21, 2014

  • History

  • Politics