Determined to Remember: Harriet Jacobs and Slavery's Descendants by Koritha Mitchell Public history sites have the potential to spark intellectual engagement because when they make embodied connections between people and the sites they visit—even when those connections evoke the cruelty of the past.  Commemoration of the Tulsa Massacre Has Put Symbolism Over Justice for the Victims by Victor Luckerson "The neighborhood’s historical fame has become a kind of albatross slung over Black Tulsans’ necks, as efforts at building concrete pathways toward justice are buried under hollow s ..read more

Leonard Raven-Hill, "For Auld Lang Syne" from Punch, 1912 And they’re off. With just a year and a half to go, Ron DeSantis has finally thrown his hat into the ring. Now the race for the GOP nomination truly begins. Nikki Haley, Asa Hutchinson, and a variety of other runners and riders are there but, for most people, this is a two-horse race between Donald Trump and DeSantis. This potential head-to-head has been a long time coming, and some think that DeSantis has left it too late. DeSantis was well ahead of Trump in GOP opinion polls shortly after the 2022 midterms, but now Trump has a command ..read more

John de Graaf and Stewart Udall We have, I fear, confused power with greatness.—Stewart Udall Stewart Udall (1920-2010) may be the most effective environmentalist in our history considering his monumental accomplishments in protecting and preserving the environment and improving the quality of life for all citizens. Unfortunately, his tireless efforts for conservation and environmental protection and his gifts as a leader are not well known to the wider public today. His life offers inspiration and a model for, among others, public servants and citizen activists today. As the Secretary of the ..read more

Old-growth redwoods, Headwaters Forest Reserve (CA) In 1985, fresh out of college, I took a job as a reporter in my hometown of Guerneville, a small village set alongside the Russian River in western Sonoma County, California. Among my many beats was the North Coast timber industry. At first I focused on the logging of second-growth redwood forests by international timber giant Louisiana-Pacific. Yet just three months after I’d landed that reporter’s job, a Houston company called Maxxam completed one of the most consequential corporate buyouts of the era by leveraging $754 million in high-yiel ..read more

Martha Hodes (l) and her older sister Catherine on the single passport they shared. Photo courtesy of Martha Hodes.     On September 6, 1970 Martha Hodes, then aged 12, and her older sister Catherine boarded a TWA around-the-world flight in Tel Aviv to return to New York after spending the summer in Israel. After a stop in Frankfurt, militants from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine hijacked the flight and rerouted it to a makeshift airfield in the Jordan desert, part of a coordinated campaign of four hijackings. The Hodes sisters became part of a six-day drama th ..read more

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Desertification, village of Telly, Mali. Photo Ferdinand Reus, CC BY-SA 2.0       The 24 main chapters of The Earth Restored: An Untold History by British historian Peter Frankopan cover a longer period of history--from “the creation of our planet around 4.6 billion years ago” until late 2022--than any book I’ve read (it begins with a series of excellent maps, the first one displaying the Pangaea Supercontinent of 200 million years ago). Its introduction and conclusion focus on the problems of present-day climate change; Frankopan stresses that all his extensive historical ..read more

An 1880 Puck Cartoon depicts Ulysses Grant surrendering his sword to James Garfield after being defeated for the Republican nomination.     The candidate, at first glance, seemed to have no business being his party’s nominee for the White House. In an era seething with political strife, he had long been viewed by peers in Washington as a pleasant but out-of-touch figure. Partisan warfare was not his strong suit; he cultivated friendships with civil rights opponents and election deniers alike. He enjoyed scrappy political debate but refused to aim any blows below the belt ..read more

      The latest twist in America’s culture wars saw crowds at the capitol in Salt Lake City this summer, protesting a book ban from the elementary and middle school libraries of Davis County, Utah. Such bans are increasingly prevalent in American public life, with issues of race and sexuality proving especially controversial. In this instance, though, contention arose because an unexpected book was deemed too “violent or vulgar” for children.   The Davis School District’s decision to ban the Bible has riled many, but Utah’s case is not unprecedented. Although the cultural ..read more

    On March 25, 1945, the United States Army issued “Fact Sheet #64: Fascism!” to promote discussions amongst American troops about fascism as the war in Europe wound down to a close. Discussion leaders were alerted “Fascism is not the easiest thing to identify and analyze; nor, once in power, is it easy to destroy. It is important for our future and that of the world that as many of us as possible understand the causes and practices of fascism, in order to combat it.”   It is worth revisiting the Army’s warnings as Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans denounce legal due process a ..read more