In my book Why Study History (revised second edition coming in March 2024!) I introduce students and other readers to Thomas Andrews and Flannery Burke’s five Cs of historical thinking. They are change over time, context, causality, complexity, and contingency. […]
historical thinking
Episode 116: “Historical Thinking for a Democracy”
If you’ve listened to this podcast over the years you know that we champion “historical thinking” as one of our best hopes for sustaining and preserving American democratic life. In this episode we talk with Zachary Cote, the Executive Director […]
John McWhorter on the Florida African American history curriculum
I took a little heat for my take on the Florida African American history controversy. Last month I wrote: The standards were much better than I expected. If I was a high school teacher in Florida I could easily work […]
Responding to the critics of my piece “Kid Gloves” (1619 Project)
It looks like my feature we published on Friday at Current received some attention on Twitter. I’m glad people are reading it and, for the most part, taking it seriously. For the record, here is everything I have written at […]
Are historians attacking the right without asking about the left?
Johann Neem, professor of history at Western Washington University and the editor of the Journal of the Early Republic, thinks so. And he is absolutely right Here is a taste of his review of Kevin Kruse’s and Julian Zelizer’s edited […]
“The Bartons are surrounded by tools but that fact doesn’t make them historians anymore than my tool collection makes me a mechanic.”Â
Warren Throckmorton on David Barton, Tim Barton, and Wallbuilders: I have tools and gadgets and parts that I don’t know how to use. Some of those tools are left over from my dad and some seem to have just appeared […]
We have a cover!
The cover of the second edition of Why Study History : Reflecting on the Importance of the Past is here! The book will be available in early 2024.
Arthur Brooks: “Google isn’t grad school”
According to public intellectual Arthur Brooks, the internet has created “an explosion of nonsense.” He’s right. Let’s take my discipline of American history for example. If you read this blog, you know that there is a lot of bad history […]
Historian Barbara Fields on the 1619 Project
Here is the Columbia University historian on how to think historically about 17th-century Virginia:
Virtue and historical thinking
I am presently writing on a book on conservatism and religious liberty. As I have worked on this book, I have been immersed in the thought of Peter Viereck (1916–2006), especially his books Conservatism Revisited: The Revolt Against Ideology (1949), […]
How to teach the history wars
I think it’s fair to say we are in the midst of another round of history wars. Today’s so-called “activist historians” invoke a usable past to preach political and social agendas, while more traditional historians (of all political persuasions–from Trotskyite […]
“The issue is not white supremacy, the issue is which whites will be supreme”
[History] cuts a lot of the bullshit. If somebody can just say “white supremacy,” it releases them from having to talk about something that my mentor C. Vann Woodward pointed out many years ago in discussing the disenfranchisement movement in […]
On the “fuzzy border” between history and journalism
As a trained historian who serves as the co-founder and executive editor of an online website of opinion, I resonated with New York Times reporter Clay Risen’s recent piece at Perspctives on History: “Professional Crafts: The Fuzzy Border between History […]
Historical thinking is often paradoxical thinking
WHYY in Philadelphia recently hosted an interesting conversation between Dolly Chuch, a psychologist, and Hasan Kwame Jeffries, a historian. Chuch argues that it is difficult to get people to accept the fact that two seemingly contradictory ideas can exist at […]
Mintz: History should be relevant, but not at the expense of nuance and complexity.
Check out Steven Mintz’s piece at Inside Higher Ed. Anyone who reads this blog will know that I agree with him. I’ve staked a lot on Mintz’s claim in the title of this post A taste: I understand that at […]
Sam Wineburg explains historical thinking in less then two minutes
Learn more about Wineburg here. How much are historians today “reconciling” contradictory voices and seeking to build “coherence out of a pile of evidence that in some ways is not coherent”?
Rep. Scott Perry references Frederick Douglass from the House floor. Historian David Blight is having none of it.
I have never voted for Scott Perry, but he does represent me in the United States House of Representatives. Perry is the chairman of the right-wing House Freedom Caucus. He refused to cooperate with the House committee investigating January 6th […]
It’s time for the Umbrella Man again
I wrote about the Umbrella Man in my section on historical causation in Why Study History?: Reflecting on the Importance of the Past. Watch: Good news: I just submitted the manuscript for the revised edition of Why Study History. Stay […]
AHA president James Sweet: “The apology I issued” was not a “retraction.” Activists historians are starting a fight they will not win.
Over at The Atlantic, David Frum revisits James Sweet’s column at the Perspectives on History. I covered this controversy about history and presentism in a way that was favorable to Sweet’s position. See these posts: The James Sweet/AHA blowup What […]
Larry Schweikart: activist historian
Back in 2002 I met Larry Schweikart. He was a professor of history at the University of Dayton. I was interviewing for a job in the history department at the University of Dayton. He may have even been on the […]