Memory

She lived for 97 years. Only 24 of them were with Alexander Hamilton.

What happens when Hitler’s shadow fades—and what moral vision replaces it?

Conspiracy theories about her disappearance do a disservice to the pilot’s remarkable, flawed legacy.

As the last Holocaust survivors approach the end of their lives, an AI scholar grapples with technology that promises to freeze them in time.

Amid bluster about warfighting and lethality, it is important to recall the moral burdens of war.

The Trump administration is ordering the removal of information on slavery at multiple national parks in an effort to scrub them of “corrosive ideology.”

Cities across the American West are issuing belated apologies for 19th-century expulsions of Chinese residents, but their meaning and audience remain uncertain.

We must see the world as actors of the past did: through a foggy windshield, not a rearview mirror, facing a future of radical uncertainty.

A new biography examines how 19th-century Americans remembered Mary Ball Washington, who raised the future president on her own after her husband’s death.

The Bullock Museum glorifies Texas heroes while treating slavery like an awkward uncle no one wants to talk about.

A scorched shoe is a crucial part of Zelda Fitzgerald’s modern mythology. But there’s no proof it existed.

No one remembers the assassination of Congressman James M. Hinds. What do we risk by making it just another part of American history?

If we dismiss concepts because of particular examples of misuse, we encourage the repression of discomforting histories and ideas.

Historians say it's good to highlight America's founders, but the project takes too narrow a view of history.

Calls to attenuate the brutality of slavery in museum depictions is absurd when our institutions already downplay one of its most horrific features.

A painting of Gen. Robert E. Lee in his Confederate uniform is back on display at West Point's library.

The popular musical poses Alexander Hamilton as a symbol of the value of immigrants brought to America, but over time, his party became increasingly xenophobic.

The president’s latest criticism of museums is a thinly veiled attempt to erase Black history.

Spengler shared the anti-American prejudice of many of his German contemporaries, and it is safe to assume that he would have disparaged us as rootless.

The Trump administration has stepped up its antagonism of America’s treasured museums.

Donald Trump seems stuck in the 80s.

In the Embers series, historian M.G. Sheftall shares the stories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s last survivors and reveals why their testimony must endure.

How the fabled Hollywood director confronted survivor’s guilt, the legacies of the Holocaust, and the paradoxes of Zionism.

During his lifetime, Crockett—who went by David, not Davy—shaped his own myth. In the 20th century, his legacy got a boost from none other than Walt Disney.

Reflecting on his decades-long career, the historian considers what his field of study owes to the public.

Eighty years of talking peace and preparing for nuclear war.

The attempts by his administration to control the ways Americans engage with our nation’s history threaten to weaken patriotism, not strengthen it.

We must mobilize now to defend our profession, not only with research and teaching but in the realm of politics and public persuasion.

The biggest problem with the history Trump wants to impose on us is that it never, in fact, existed.

Gen. Leslie Groves promoted Oppenheimer as the atomic bomb's inventor to craft a propaganda narrative, obscuring the true creators and moral implications.