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early American history

“Fearless” early American and Mormon historian Richard Bushman turns 90

John Fea   |  September 29, 2021

Trent Toone of Deseret News caught up with the author of books such as From Puritan to Yankee: Character and Social Order in Connecticut, 1690-1765 (1967); King and People in Provincial Massachusetts (1985); The Refinement of America (1993); Joseph Smith: […]

The Author’s Corner with Bryan Rindfleisch

Rachel Petroziello   |  September 13, 2021

Bryan Rindfleisch is Associate Professor of History at Marquette University. This interview is based on his new book, Brothers of Coweta: Kinship, Empire, and Revolution in the Eighteenth-Century Muscogee World (University of South Carolina Press, 2021). JF: What led you […]

Recovered from the archives: “An Open Letter to the Students of Charis Bible College”

John Fea   |  August 12, 2021

Yesterday a reader told me that he was searching for this 2016 post and couldn’t find it. It seems to have disappeared from The Way of Improvement Leads Home blog. But I managed to find it at another site on […]

Episode 87: Religion and the American Revolution

John Fea   |  July 18, 2021

In her new book Religion and the American Revolution: An Imperial History, historian Katherine Carte offers a major reassessment of the relationship between Christianity and the American Revolution. She argues that religion helped set the terms by which Anglo-Americans encountered the […]

Yale’s Harry Stout is still going strong

John Fea   |  July 10, 2021

I am teaching Harry Stout’s The Divine Dramatist again this Fall. I find it to be the most undergraduate accessible biography of Whitefield available. My students really like it. Stout has been busy of late. He has two biographies in […]

Did Benjamin Franklin successfully thwart cancel culture?

John Fea   |  April 22, 2021

Here is “presidential historian” Jane Hampton Cook yesterday on Fox News: Cook’s appearance follows this article at Fox News. What qualifies one as a “presidential historian?” Unfortunately, Cook doesn’t really know what she is talking about here. Cook comes from […]

The Author’s Corner with Kelly Jones

Annie Thorn   |  April 12, 2021

Kelly Jones is Assistant Professor of History at Arkansas Tech University. This interview is based on her new book, A Weary Land: Slavery on the Ground in Arkansas (University of Georgia Press, 2021). JF: What led you to write A […]

The Author’s Corner with Robert Wooster

Annie Thorn   |  April 5, 2021

Robert Wooster is recently retired as Regents Professor of History at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, where he taught for thirty-five years. This interview is based on his new book, The United States Army and the Making of America: From Confederation […]

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