Soldiers listen as President Donald Trump speaks at Fort Bragg on June 10, 2025, in North Carolina. | Alex Brandon/AP

Trump Reverses Army Base Names in Latest DEI Purge

The announcement comes just four days before the Army’s multimillion dollar parade in Washington.
Collage of various black women mentioned within the article.

Pulitzer Prize-Winning Edda L. Fields-Black on the Combahee River Raid

Harriet Tubman’s revolutionary Civil War raid and the power of preserving Black history in the face of political pushback.
Bound volumes detailing the history of the United States' foreign relations.

These Historians Oversee Unbiased Accounts of U.S. Foreign Policy. Trump Fired Them All.

The volumes of the Foreign Relations of the United States have been written since Abraham Lincoln’s time.

George Floyd and the Writing of the Final Chapter of Richmond's Confederate Monuments

Do we as Americans have the strength to confront our complicated past?
John Trumbull’s painting of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, 1819.

Who Invented the “Founding Fathers?”

The making of a myth.
An iMac computer displays the starry night screensaver.

Recurring Screens

Reflections on memory, dreams, and computer screensavers.
Karl Marx gazing off into the distance while surrounded by books

Karl Marx’s Legacy in the United States

For two centuries, Karl Marx’s thoughts have significantly impacted US politics. In turn, his close study of the US informed the development of his ideas.
Painting of the muse of history.
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So Ductile Is History in the Hands of Man!

The past and present of counterfactual history, from antiquity to the Napoleonic Wars to a few very active subreddits.
A Freedmen’s Bureau office, Richmond, Virginia, 1866.

One Brief Shining Moment

Manisha Sinha’s history of Reconstruction sheds fresh light on the period that fleetingly opened a door to a different America.
Scene of prehistoric game hunters.

Prehistory’s Original Sin

We need more than genealogies to know who we are, and who we ought to become.
Helicopter, soldiers, and civilians at the fall of Saigon.
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How We Oversimplified the History of the Vietnam War

Popular memory of the war in both the U.S. and Vietnam tends to cast the fall of Saigon as inevitable.
Gothic cathedral

On What Americans Know About Medieval History

A public opinion poll suggests that people really have strong opinions about a period that they don't really know anything about.
American soldiers in Vietnam.

If You’ve Watched Ken Burns’ Vietnam Documentary, Do You Need Netflix’s?

I, a historian of the Vietnam War, have watched the Turning Point treatment. I have some notes.
Film still from "Three Seasons" of a flower seller in Vietnam.

Tony Bui on the Vietnam War’s Cinematic Legacy

Films from Vietnam and Hollywood testify to the range of stories told about the war on-screen and the different memories they embody.
National Public Housing Museum

At the National Public Housing Museum, an Embattled Idea Finds a Home

Chicago’s latest museum looks to change the narrative around the federally supported housing projects that US cities turned their backs on decades ago.
Trump from behind, and the Washington monument.

How Trump Wants to Change History

Late last month, President Donald Trump issued an executive order to restore “truth and sanity to American history.”
Painting of the Battle of San Pasquale in the U.S.-Mexico War.

Borders May Change, But People Remain

The legacies of conflict—and their increasingly accessible images in a global age—frame the shared bonds of trauma in keeping their memories alive.
Lindsey R. Peterson.

'Home Builders': Free Labor Households and Settler Colonialism in Western Civil War Commemorations

On the gendered dimensions of trans-Mississippi Civil War memory, the idea of the single-family household, and the politics of expansion and settlement.
National Museum of African American History and Culture.

What It Means to Tell the Truth About America

And what happens when empirical fact is labeled “improper ideology.”
A monument of the Minutemen line in Concord, Massachusetts.
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The Dangerous Afterlives of Lexington and Concord

How a myth about farmers taking on the British has fueled more than two centuries of exclusionary nationalism.
Cracked marble statue head.

Looks Like Mussolini, Quacks Like Mussolini

The National Garden of American Heroes represents a dangerous shift in values—from inquiry to reverence.
Jackie Robinson.

Out at Home?

Under the Trump administration's book police, Jackie Robinson’s life and actions are considered dangerous memories.
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What Japan’s Atom Bomb Survivors Have Taught Us About the Dangers of Nuclear War

Japanese survivors recall the day the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and warn of future risks.
Illustration from the “Projected Trends” section of Hugh Ferriss’ The Metropolis of Tomorrow (1929).

Modern Babylon: Ziggurat Skyscrapers and Hugh Ferriss’ Retrofuturism

In the early twentieth century, architects turned to a newly discovered past to craft novel visions of the future: the ancient history of Mesopotamia.
General Ulysses S. Grant receiving Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox.
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Appomattox Exposes the Dangers of Myths Replacing History

Historians have revealed that the story Americans long learned about the end of the Civil War was a myth.

At the Smithsonian, Donald Trump Takes Aim at History

The urge to police the past is hardly an invention of the Trump Administration. It is the reflexive obsession of autocrats everywhere.
A collage of pages from the National Park service website, including one about Appomattox Court House and one about the Underground Railroad, showing language stricken out since Donald Trump's innauguration in 2025.

Amid Anti-DEI Push, National Park Service Rewrites History of Underground Railroad

Since Trump took office, the park service — charged with preserving American history — has changed how it describes key moments from slavery to Jim Crow.
Japanese American National Museum Volunteer Barbara Keimi stamps the Ireichō

The Japanese American National Museum Is a Site of Remembrance and Belonging

The Japanese American National Museum embraces the Japanese-American experience in all its permutations.
English looking at the word "croatoan" carved in a tree.

The Lingering Mystery of the 'Lost Colony' of Roanoke

From historians to horror writers to white nationalists, attempts to explain the settlement's fate reveal a great deal about our own attitudes.
The setting sun illuminates the site of the Topaz Relocation Center, a federal prison camp in Millard County, Utah.

The Murder, the Museum and the Monument

How the discovery of a long-lost monument shattered trust between a Japanese American community and the museum built to preserve its history.