1960s

The Author’s Corner with John Wigger

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John Wigger is Professor of History at the University of Missouri. This interview is based on his new book, The Hijacking of American Flight 119: How D.B. Cooper Inspired a Skyjacking Craze and the FBI’s Battle to Stop It (Oxford […]

Growing Up Absurd and patriotism

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This is part II of a three-part series of reflections on Paul Goodman’s 1960 bestseller Growing Up Absurd. If you have missed part I, you can read it here. A chief argument of Growing Up Absurd is that the United […]

Did Martin Luther King Jr. really criticize Malcolm X?

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Here is Gillian Brockell at The Washington Post: Jonathan Eig was deep in the Duke University archives researching his new biography of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. when he made an alarming discovery: King’s harshest and most famous criticism of Malcolm X, in which […]

What to expect in the new JFK files

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New files will release today. Here is Philip Shenon, the author of a book on the JFK assassination, at Politico: For this nation’s army of conspiracy theorists, few long-secret government documents have whipped up so much suspicion in the 59 […]

Staughton Lynd, 1929-2022

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We brought Staughton Lynd’s death to your attention yesterday. We now have an obituary. Here is the New York Times: Staughton Lynd, a historian and lawyer who over a long and varied career organized schools for Black children in Mississippi, […]

Episode 95: “The Lost Promise of American Universities”

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American universities entered the 1960s with the hope of bringing a high-quality system of universal higher education to all comers. But by the early 1970s hope turned to despair as universities gave way to neoliberalism, corporatism, and a powerful conservative […]