Menu
Idea

historical amnesia

329
Filter by:

Filter by published date

Viewing 61–90 of 329 results. Go to first page
illustration including "Napalm Girl" photo and photo of the photographer

The View from Here

Fifty years on, Nick Ut’s Pulitzer Prize–winning photograph, “Napalm Girl,” still has the power to shock. But can a picture change the world?
by Errol Morris via Air Mail on June 4, 2022
1865 map of North Carolina & South Carolina
original

Gone to Carolina

Ed Ayers heads south in search of stories from two centuries ago. Traces are there, but larger meanings remain elusive.
by Ed Ayers on May 31, 2022
An aerial view of a firebombed area in Tokyo in 1945.

When Tokyo Burned

“Paper City” explores the forgotten firebombing of Japan’s capital.
by Spencer Cohen via Foreign Policy on May 29, 2022
original

History on the Road

After decades of reading, writing, and teaching about the American past, Ed Ayers sets out to see how that past is remembered in the places where it happened.
by Ed Ayers on May 17, 2022
A woman lights a candle at a memorial for the Buffalo shooting victims, May 2022.
partner

The Mass Shooting in Buffalo Reflects Deeply Rooted American Ideas

Until we grapple with our history, white supremacist terrorism will keep happening.
by Jesse Curtis via Made By History on May 16, 2022
Picture of Salmon P. Chase. (Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

The Most Important 19th Century American You've Never Heard Of

A new book chronicles the life of the 19th century political giant of Salmon Chase.
by Carl Paulus via Washington Examiner on May 13, 2022
Painting of Yosemite Valley

How Place Names Impact The Way We See Landscape

Western landscapes and their names are stratified with personal memories, ancestral teachings, mythic events and colonial disturbances.
by B. 'Toastie' Oaster via High Country News on May 1, 2022
2022 oil painting of Jo Collier

They Called Her ‘Black Jet’

Joetha Collier, a young Black woman, was killed by a white man in 1971, near the Mississippi town where Emmett Till was murdered. Why isn’t her case well-known today?
by Keisha N. Blain via The Atlantic on April 28, 2022
Thomas Kitchin's 1760 map of the "Cherokee Nation".

The Remapping of America—From an Indigenous Point of View

New maps can revive Cherokee place names in Southern Appalachia and restore crucial knowledge amid an environmental catastrophe.
by Gregory D. Smithers via The New Republic on January 17, 2022
Black and white photo of U.S. soldiers outside Manila during the Philippine-American War.

The Resounding Darkness of America’s Black Sites

It is in the hidden spaces of American empire that the realities of power can truly be seen.
by Jonathan M. Katz via The Baffler on January 10, 2022
Collage of nature images and transcendentalists' faces, with flowers in Emerson's eyes.

Emerson and Thoreau’s Fanatical Freedom

Why do the Transcendentalists still have an outsize influence on American culture?
by Sarah Blackwood via The New Republic on January 6, 2022
Major General Smedley Butler addresses nearly 16,000 veteran bonus marchers camped in Washington, D.C., July 20, 1932. Smedley urged them to stay until the bonus has been paid. (AP Photo)

The Plot Against American Democracy That Isn't Taught in Schools

How the authors of the Depression-era “Business Plot” aimed to take power away from FDR and stop his “socialist” New Deal.
by Jonathan M. Katz via Rolling Stone on January 1, 2022
Japanese migrants gather in Lima, Peru, in December 1941

America’s Forgotten Internment

The United States confined 2,200 Latin Americans of Japanese descent during World War II. They’re still pushing for redress.
by Jesús A. Rodríguez via Politico Magazine on December 5, 2021
A boulder marks the location where Brister Freeman’s house is thought to have stood.

Black People Lived in Walden Woods Long Before Henry David Thoreau

Decades before Thoreau's famous experiment, a community of formerly enslaved men and women had a much different experience of life in the woods.
by Sydney Trent via Retropolis on November 28, 2021
Illustration of the first Taoist funeral procession in Los Angeles, which was held in 1872 and was led by a Taoist priest from China. Processions were held every three years until 1903, for the gods to escort the victims through the seven layers of heaven.

Is L.A. Ready to Remember the 1871 Chinese Massacre?

Long buried, the 1871 Chinese Massacre surfaces amid a significant anniversary and a new wave of violence.
by Michael Woo via Zócalo Public Square on October 24, 2021
Residents of Marja returning to their village on motorcycles

The Lie of Nation Building

From the very beginning, the problem with the US involvement in Afghanistan lay essentially in the deficits in American democracy.
by Fintan O’Toole via New York Review of Books on September 8, 2021
Protestor holds 'Dismantle White Supremacy' sign at Civil War statue
partner

The Historical Preservation Law That Obscures History

At the South Carolina State House, the history of Reconstruction has been systemically erased from view.
by Ehren Foley via Made By History on August 12, 2021
Barn where Emmett Till was killed

His Name Was Emmett Till

In 1955, just past daybreak, a Chevrolet truck pulled up to an unmarked building. A 14-year-old child was in the back.
by Wright Thompson via The Atlantic on July 22, 2021

The Rise of Anti-History

The Trumpist wing of the GOP uses history as a bludgeon, without regard to context, logic, or proportionality.
by David A. Graham via The Atlantic on July 10, 2021
Illustration of the Salem Witch Trials, with a "witch" appearing to levitate books

My Witch-Hunt History, and America's: A Personal Journey to 1692

Revisiting America's first witch hunt — and discovering how much of it was a family affair. My family, that is.
by Andrew O'Hehir via Salon on July 4, 2021
Immigrant mother and child embracing

As American as Family Separation

Though the cruelties of the Trump administration’s “Zero Tolerance” policy were unique, they were part of an American tradition of taking children from parents.
by Hari Kunzru via New York Review of Books on June 9, 2021
A slave in chains behind an American flag

Germany Faced its Horrible Past. Can We Do the Same?

For too long, we've ignored our real history. We must face where truth can take us.
by Michele Norris via Washington Post on June 3, 2021

Meet Benjamin Banneker, the Black Scientist Who Documented Brood X Cicadas in the Late 1700s

A prominent intellectual and naturalist, the Maryland native wrote extensively on natural phenomena and anti-slavery causes.
by Nora McGreevy via Smithsonian on May 7, 2021
Glacier National Park, in Montana, as seen from the Blackfeet Reservation, near Duck Lake.

Return the National Parks to the Tribes

The national parks are the closest thing America has to sacred lands, and like the frontier of old, they can help forge our democracy anew.
by David Treuer via The Atlantic on April 12, 2021
Map of Oberlin Village in Raleigh, NC.

Vanishing Neighborhoods

The fate of Raleigh's 11 missing freedman's villages.
by Heather Leah via WRAL on January 21, 2021
Land of Hope Book Cover, which has a painting of buildings and boats

An America Where Everyone Meant Well

Jonathan W. Wilson offers a constructively critical review of Wilfred McClay's American history textbook "Land of Hope."
by Jonathan W. Wilson via U.S. Intellectual History Blog on January 9, 2021

Her Sentimental Properties

White women have trafficked in Black women’s milk.
by Sarah Mesle via Los Angeles Review of Books on December 22, 2020
Photo taken from behind two men in a machine gun nest

‘The Road to Blair Mountain’

It’s the biggest battle on U.S. soil that most Americans have never heard of.
by Jim Branscome via The Daily Yonder on October 1, 2020
Drawing of different kinds of fast food, such as pizza, a taco, and a hamburger

Fast-Food Buffets Are a Thing of the Past. Some Doubt They Ever Even Existed.

A McDonald’s breakfast buffet. An all-you-can-eat Taco Bell. This isn’t the stuff dreams are made of, but a real yet short-lived phenomenon.
by MM Carrigan via Eater on September 29, 2020
Influenza newspaper report

What I Learned by Following the 1918-19 ‘Spanish’ Flu Pandemic in (Almost) Real Time

Once the COVID crisis is over, it may take us quite some time to process and psychologically recover from this tragedy.
by Ethan J. Kytle via Tropics of Meta on September 25, 2020
View More
30 of
329

Filter Results:

Suggested Filters:

Idea

Person

brought to you by
© Bunk History