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Photo illustration of a button causing death courtesy of MIT Press Reader.

How Americans Got Comfortable With Killing at the Push of a Button

For years, the idea seemed immoral and dangerous.
by Rachel Plotnick via Slate on June 20, 2022
Noam Chomsky

“Every Time We Build Up Our Military Budget, We’re Attacking Ourselves”

Noam Chomsky discusses the hypocrisies of US empire and why if we really wanted to build a decent society, we’d immediately slash the massive military budget.
by David Barsamian, Noam Chomsky via Jacobin on June 17, 2022
Black and white photo of D-Day Normandy Landings

For the Anniversary of D-Day - Blitzkrieg Manquée? Or, a New Mode of "Firepower War"?

Why and how did D-Day succeed? The question has given postwar historians no peace.
by Adam Tooze via Chartbook on June 6, 2022
Town council leader and lawyer Khalid Salman by the graves of his sister and her children, who were among the twenty-four Iraqi civilians killed by US Marines in the 2005 Haditha massacre, Haditha, Iraq, 2011.

Our Hypocrisy on War Crimes

The US’s history of evasiveness around wartime atrocities undermines the very institution that could bring Putin to justice: the International Criminal Court.
by Fintan O’Toole via New York Review of Books on May 5, 2022
English painting of Pocahontas by Simon van de Passe.

The Moment That Changed Colonial-Indigenous Relations Forever

How a massacre on March 22, 1622 irrevocably shaped relations between Indigenous Americans and English colonists.
by Peter C. Mancall via TIME on March 22, 2022
Illustration of John von Neumann surrounded by mathematical formulas, by Valentin Pavageau

John von Neumann Thought He Had the Answers

The father of game theory helped develop the atom bomb—and thought he could calculate when to use it.
by Samanth Subramanian via The New Republic on March 8, 2022
Iron fence featuring mickey mouse shaped ornaments.
partner

Movie Studios Are Abandoning Russia, A Far Cry From How They Handled Nazi Germany

During World War II, movie studios went to pains not to alienate the Nazis.
by David Welky, Noel Murray via Made By History on March 8, 2022
The sun setting over dozens of B-52 bombers waiting in the Arizona desert to be scrapped at the Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Center, Tucson, 1998

Who’s Afraid of Isolationism?

For decades, America’s governing elite caricatured sensible restraint in order to pursue geopolitical dominance and endless wars. At last the folly may be over.
by Stephen Wertheim via New York Review of Books on February 3, 2022
In this photo provided by the U.S. Air Force, a transport plane is framed in a shattered window at the Baghdad airport on June 24, 2003.

How America Learned to Love (Ineffective) Sanctions

Over the past century, the United States came to rely ever more on economic coercion—with questionable results.
by Nicholas Mulder via Foreign Policy on January 30, 2022
original

Best History Writing of 2021

Bunk's American History Top 40.
by Tony Field on January 26, 2022
A woman is surrounded by her children as she sits amid a pile of debris in the processing area towards Abbey Gate, as they wait to leave Afghanistan, Wednesday, August 25, 2021.

What We Miss When We Say a War Has “Ended”

Bringing to light the kinship among American wars—and, by extension, their true significance—requires situating them in a single historical framework.
by Andrew J. Bacevich via The Nation on January 25, 2022
Left: Headshot of Shoichi Yokoi in uniform Right: Yokoi sobbing in his wheelchair when he returns to Japan in 1972

The Japanese WWII Soldier Who Refused to Surrender for 27 Years

Unable to bear the shame of being captured as a prisoner of war, Shoichi Yokoi hid in the jungles of Guam until January 1972.
by Meilan Solly via Smithsonian on January 21, 2022
Ansel Adams photograph of a baseball game with the Sierra Nevada mountains in the background.

An American Landscape

In 1943, Ansel Adams traveled to photograph Manzanar—one of the ten internment camps that together detained 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II.
by Tausif Noor via Dissent on December 10, 2021
Picture of country singer Charley Pride performing with guitar and microphone.

Charley Pride: How the US Country Star Became an Unlikely Hero During the Troubles

Tammy Wynette and Johnny Cash cancelled gigs in Belfast during the violent 1970s, but Pride played on.
by Walker Mimms via The Guardian on December 8, 2021
Cover of Moyne's book, with the subtitle "How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War," in front of a desert landscape.

Not Humane, Just Invisible

A counter-narrative to Samuel Moyn’s "Humane": drone warfare and the long history of liberal empire blurring the line between policing and endless war.
by Priya Satia via Los Angeles Review of Books on December 3, 2021
President Harry Truman at a podium, giving a speech at NATO's inception in 1949.

Containment Can Work Against China, Too

There are important differences between Xi Jinping’s China and the Soviet Union, but the Cold War still offers clear strategic guidance for the U.S.
by Hal Brands via The Wall Street Journal on December 3, 2021
Elmwood Cemetery, where Henry Ellett, Alice Mitchell and Freda Ward are buried

A Deadly Introduction

Who was Henry Ellett? Looking at his grave you wouldn't know much about him.
by Alexis Coe via Study Marry Kill on October 13, 2021
Portraits of the top 50 individuals in US public monuments - mostly white men

National Monument Audit

A massive assessment of the nation's current monument landscape, posing questions about common knowledge and debunking misperceptions within public memory.
via Monument Lab on September 29, 2021
National Park Services sign
partner

The Roots of the Politicization of the National Parks Service

Understanding how the National Park Service Director is chosen is important for understanding the current state of our national parks system.
by Nick DeLuca via HNN on September 26, 2021
President Biden visits Section 60 of Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia on April 14.
partner

The History Shaping Memorial Services For Fallen Service Members

The way we commemorate those who have made the ultimate sacrifice dates to the Civil War.
by Jeffrey Allen Smith via Made By History on September 14, 2021
A family photo shows Balqes Jassem with her late husband, Abdul Ameer Alwan, and their daughter, Aman Alwan, at home in Richardson, Tex. The older Alwan was an Iraqi painter who passed away in 2015. The family came to the United States as Iraqi refugees in 2007.

New Americans

Hundreds of thousands of Afghans and Iraqis displaced by war have settled in the U.S., their journeys spurred by tragedy and loss in the wake of 9/11.
by Abigail Hauslohner via Washington Post on September 9, 2021
The First Hague Conference in 1899: A meeting in the Orange Hall of Huis ten Bosch palace – collections of the Imperial War Museums.

Oh, the Humanity

Yale's John Fabian Witt pens a review of Samuel Moyn's new book, Humane.
by John Fabian Witt via Just Security on September 8, 2021
A bicyclist rides past the rubble of a church.

The Disasters in Afghanistan and Haiti Share the Same Twisted Root

Half a world away, the citizens of two nations suffer at the hands of a familiar malefactor.
by Jonathan M. Katz via The New Republic on August 20, 2021
A helicopter hovers over a building.
partner

The U.S. Failed to Learn the Lesson of Vietnam. Will it Learn From Afghanistan?

The U.S. can’t win wars for countries.
by Andrew Wiest via Made By History on August 16, 2021
Picture of the Helicopter leaving Saigon following the departure from Vietnam.

The Ides of August

Sarah Chayes describes her experiences in Afghanistan and who's to blame for the problems today.
by Sarah Chayes via Sarah Chayes on August 15, 2021
The Philippine Scouts, a unit of the American army blamed for mass killings and torture, stand in formation circa 1905.

How the Philippines Were Crucial to the Making of American Empire

The US has long had a brutal, domineering relationship with the Philippines. And crucially, it’s depended on the labor of colonized Filipinos themselves.
by Michael Brenes via Jacobin on August 13, 2021
British soldiers with a four-horn sound locator. This photograph documents a military drill during the interwar period.

Powers of Hearing: The Military Science of Sound Location

During WWI the act of hearing was recast as a tactical activity — one that could determine human and even national survival.
by Gascia Ouzounian via The MIT Press Reader on July 26, 2021
A man holds an axe head between his fingers

After Defeating Hernando de Soto, the Chickasaw Took his Stuff and Remade It

The site offers rare evidence of interactions between de Soto and Indigenous people.
by Kiona N. Smith via Ars Technica on July 14, 2021
Scottsboro Boys standing

Ada Wright, The Scottsboro Defense Campaign, and the Popular Front

The Scottsboro Case quickly became one of the most infamous international spectacles that would eventually define the interwar period.
by Ashley Everson via Black Perspectives on July 13, 2021
Picture of David Rumsfield

How Rumsfeld Deserves to Be Remembered

America’s worst secretary of defense never expressed a quiver of regret.
by George Packer via The Atlantic on July 1, 2021
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