The historian and his wife Abby recently toured “the quiet farmlands and serene towns along the Erie Canal” once known as the “burned-over district.” As Ayers writes in this piece at Bunk: “Religious revivals, reform movements, and political conflict had...
New York History
The Buffalo shooting in historical context
Historian Chad Williams places the shooting in the larger context of Buffalo history. Here is a taste of his piece at The Washington Post: Historical context is necessary to fully grasp the significance of the Buffalo shooting. White-supremacist terrorism targeting...
Kenneth Jackson reviews Jon Butler’s God in Gotham
One of the late 20th-century’s foremost historians of New York City reviews one of the late 20th-century’s foremost religious historians. Here is a taste of Jackson’s review of Butler‘s God in Gotham: The Miracle of Religion in Modern Manhattan: When...
The radical tradition in early national New York
Historian Sean Griffin explores the legacy of Thomas Paine in early 19th-century New York. Here is a taste of his piece at the blog Gotham: New York City has long been considered a hotbed of radical political ideas, as well...
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...