Jordan E. Taylor is a writer and editor who has published in the Journal of the Early Republic, Early American Studies, and more. This interview is based on his new book, Misinformation Nation: Foreign News and the Politics of Truth in Revolutionary...
American Revolution
1776 returns to Broadway and it’s a little different from the 1969 production
Harvard historian Jane Kamensky has one of the first reviews. A taste: In May 2019, theater websites reported that Diane Paulus, the artistic director of Harvard’s American Repertory Theater (ART) and a noted Broadway hitmaker, would mount a revival of 1776, to open...
The Author’s Corner with Holly A. Mayer
Holly A. Mayer is Professor Emerita of History at Duquesne University. This interview is based on her new book, Women Waging War in the American Revolution (University of Virginia Press, 2022). JF: What led you to write Women Waging War...
The Author’s Corner with Jeffers Lennox
Jeffers Lennox is Associate Professor of History at Wesleyan University. This interview is based on his new book, North of America: Loyalists, Indigenous Nations, and the Borders of the Long American Revolution (Yale University Press, 2022). JF: What led you...
Thomas Jefferson: hero or villain?
The title of this post is not, primarily, a historical question. It is primarily a moral question. We should keep the complexity of the past in mind as we celebrate Independence Day. Check out early American historian’s Jack Rakove‘s recent...
Woody Holton reflects on Liberty is Sweet
Over at the Age of Revolutions blog, historian Tom Cutterman of the University of Birmingham (UK) interviews University of South Carolina historian Woody Holton. The topic is Holton’s recent book, Liberty is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution....
The Author’s Corner with Jonathan Singerton
Jonathan Singerton is Lecturer of Global and Comparative Histories of Central Europe at the University of Innsbruck. This interview is based on his new book, The American Revolution and the Habsburg Monarchy (University of Virginia Press, 2022). JF: What led...
If you think the debate over American history is bad now, wait until 2026
What will debate over history in schools look like in 2026, the year we celebrate America’s 250th birthday. Over at Time, John Garrison Marks of the American Association for State and Local History has some thoughts . Here is a...
2022 George Washington Book Prize finalists announced
The George Washington Prize honors outstanding new works on George Washington and his times (the Revolutionary and founding eras circa 1760-1820). The $50,000 prize is sponsored by Washington College, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, and George Washington’s Mount Vernon....
The Author’s Corner with S. Scott Rohrer
S. Scott Rohrer is a historian of early America. This interview is based on his new book, The Folly of Revolution: Thomas Bradbury Chandler and the Loyalist Mind in a Democratic Age (Penn State University Press, 2022). JF: What led...
My new toy
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How Americans have remembered the July 1776 toppling of the George III statue in Bowling Green (Manhattan)
Wendy Bellion, an art historian at the University of Delaware, has an interesting piece at Smithsonian Magazine on the patriots’ toppling of this statue and a New York Historical Society exhibit on monuments. Here is a taste: A monument to...
Stanford’s Jack Rakove is the latest historian to critique the 1619 Project
Tom Mackaman of the World Socialist Web Site is back with another interview. Here is a taste of his conversation with Stanford’s Jack Rakove: TM: You mentioned it before, and we will need to turn to the 1619 Project, whose...
The Author’s Corner with Hannah Farber
Hannah Farber is Assistant Professor of History at Columbia University. This interview is based on her new book, Underwriters of the United States: How Insurance Shaped the American Founding (Omohundro Institute and University of North Carolina Press, 2021). JF: What...
Abigail, an enslaved woman owned by John Jay, died in Paris trying to win her freedom
Historian Martha Jones tells the story at The New York Times: Despite its many markers of memory there are some stories about the past that Paris does not tell. I am an African American historian who spends each summer in...
Gordon Wood and Woody Holton will debate the meaning of the American Revolution
Learn how to watch Saturday’s debate here. It is sponsored by the Massachusetts Historical Society. Here’s more: Gordon Wood and Woody Holton are both distinguished scholars of the American Revolution. But they approach the founding very differently, as you can...
Albert Mohler interviews Gordon Wood
The 87-year-old American historian has a new book out. It is titled Power and Liberty: Constitutionalism in the American Revolution. Listen here. At about the 34:00 mark Mohler asks Wood about how he does history. Wood talks about the ahistorical...
Vaccine mandates are very American
Ohio representative Jim Jordan recently tweeted this: Not really. Here is The Washington Post: At a time when the delta variant’s summer surge has renewed the nation’s divisions over coronavirus vaccines, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) on Monday said mandates enforcing...
Liberty University’s Standing for Freedom Center just released the summer issue of its journal “Reclaiming 1776.” Let’s take a look.
Liberty University president Jerry Prevo begins the journal with a quote from John Adams: Before my God, I believe the hour has come. My judgement approves this measure, and my whole heart is in it. All that I have, and...
Snakes and late colonial America
My first or second year at Messiah College, the student history club produced t-shirts with Ben Franklin’s famous “Join or Die” snake image (see above) on the front. It was partly an attempt to raise the club’s membership. Messiah is...