History Archives - Page 2 of 13

History

Why the Twentieth-Century Novel Is Stranger Than Fiction

“An exploding form in an exploding world”

November 22, 2024 • by Mitchell Abidor and Edwin Frank

In the years that Edwin Frank has been at the head of New York Review Books Classics, he has revived forgotten or out of print novels like John Williams’s Stoner and Vassily Grossman’s Life and Fate. He has also made available the work of previously unknown authors from America and ...

Why the Twentieth-Century Novel Is Stranger Than Fiction

Activism

Building Black Political Power in Jackson, Mississippi

Cooperation Jackson is using the strategies of just transition to foster coalitions and shape local politics

November 20, 2024 • by Mike Harrington

Jackson is the capital city of the state of Mississippi and was named after the seventh president of the United States, Andrew Jackson (who was responsible for the Trail of Tears—one of many forced relocation marches for people who were Indigenous to the land—and a slave owner). Mississippi is also ...

Building Black Political Power in Jackson, Mississippi

Economy

You Are Entitled to Live Your Own Life—If Your Employer Allows It

How the business of cobbling together a living became a new form of unpaid labor

October 17, 2024 • by Phyllis Jeffrey

I know someone, a nurse, who doesn’t have health insurance. His employer, a staffing agency, bounces him from assignment to assignment—sometimes with only a day’s notice. Engaged in skilled care work that is profoundly dependent on the ability to maintain human relationships, he often finds himself treated more like a ...

You Are Entitled to Live Your Own Life—If Your Employer Allows It

Europe & Central Asia

Thinking in Dark Times: Life, Death, and Social Solidarity

Living through war can transform how we engage with philosophy

September 30, 2024 • by Aaron James Wendland and Volodymyr Yermolenko

This lecture was delivered as part of a benefit conference for the Ukrainian academy that Aaron James Wendland organized in March 2023 at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. The benefit conference was designed to provide financial support for academic and civic ...

Thinking in Dark Times: Life, Death, and Social Solidarity

East Asia & Pacific

How Vanessa Chan Came to Write a Global Bestseller, The Storm We Made

A graduate of The New School’s MFA in Creative Writing shines a light on a rarely discussed period of Malaysian history

June 5, 2024 • by Evangeline Riddiford Graham

In the lonely period of the pandemic, Vanessa Chan could not get home to her family. In those years, she lost her mother. She sheltered in place. And she wrote her first book, The Storm We Made....

How Vanessa Chan Came to Write a Global Bestseller, <em>The Storm We Made</em>

Europe & Central Asia

The French Politics of the Pantheon and the Monumental Hypocrisy of Emmanuel Macron

How recognizing the heroism of past immigrants serves as cover for a nation’s anti-immigrant present

April 8, 2024 • by Mitchell Abidor

It was striking that a center-right president like Emmanuel Macron, who has recently hardened his position on immigrants and immigration, would grant such a high honor to two immigrant Communists. ...

The French Politics of the Pantheon and the Monumental Hypocrisy of Emmanuel Macron

History

Threshold Dwelling in the Ruins of Llano del Rio

Excavating a socialist colony in the desert

March 19, 2024 • by Joscelyn Jurich

In the desert's shifting realms, mirages dance with possibility and impossibility. Amidst the stark expanse, a threshold-like bardo blurs distinctions between creation and collapse, thriving and weakness....

Threshold Dwelling in the Ruins of Llano del Rio

History

Democracy’s Endgame?

A plea for sustaining the infrastructure of hope

January 31, 2024 • by Elzbieta Matynia

Though surrounded by these largely man-made fires, we’ve at least been trying to put them out. It would be so much easier, though, to fight these fires if they were not fueled by massive efforts to dismantle the democratic order....

History

Why the Study of History Belongs to the Public

How social media makes possible a more democratic republic of letters

January 17, 2024 • by Rose Botaish

For many museums and archives, social media has already become a space to share more widely images and information from their collections....

History

Nature, Wild Girls, and Putting History in a New Environmental Perspective

In her latest book, historian Tiya Miles explores how some marginalized but eminent American women were shaped by the call of the wild

December 4, 2023 • by Brianna Corley

In her latest book, Wild Girls, Harvard historian Tiya Miles is particularly concerned with how the relationship with nature established by several nineteenth-century women—some prominent, some not—helped them flourish outside of conventional gender roles. ...

Nature, Wild Girls, and Putting History in a New Environmental Perspective

Economy

Home Ownership and the History of Mortgages

Episode 402

November 28, 2023 • by Nicole Hemmer, Natalia Mehlman Petrzela and Neil J. Young

In this episode of Past Present, Niki, Natalia, and Neil discuss Americans’ attachment to the thirty-year mortgage...

History

Can You Smile and Say “Land of the Free”?

An excerpt from American Confidential

November 6, 2023 • by Deanne Stillman

Can you smile and say ‘Land of the free’? Of course you can. There . . . that looks perfect. Did you know that this is where the West begins?” And then she would drive off and her mood instantly soured and she would wonder why her son Lee hardly ever ...