Over at CNN, Zachary Wolf interviews Andrew Jackson scholar Daniel Feller on comparisons on the “spoils system.” Here is a taste: WOLF: You’ve written extensively about the spoils system. How would you describe it to Americans today? FELLER: It is a system […]
political history
The Author’s Corner with Richard Carwardine
Richard Carwardine is Rhodes Professor of American History Emeritus and Distinguished Fellow at the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford. This interview is based on his new book, Righteous Strife: How Warring Religious Nationalists Forged Lincoln’s Union (Knopf, […]
The Author’s Corner with Peter Roady
Peter Roady is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Utah. This interview is based on his new book, The Contest over National Security: FDR, Conservatives, and the Struggle to Claim the Most Powerful Phrase in American Politics (Harvard […]
The Author’s Corner with Zachary Michael Jack
Zachary Michael Jack is Professor of English at North Central College. This interview is based on his new book, The Strange Genius of Ignatius Donnelly: The Populist Who Debunked Shakespeare and Found Atlantis (Northern Illinois University Press, 2024). JF: What […]
The Author’s Corner with Ian T. Iverson
Ian T. Iverson is Associate Editor of the John Dickinson Writings Project. This interview is based on his new book, Holding the Political Center in Illinois: Conservatism and Union on the Brink of the Civil War (Kent State University Press, […]
The Author’s Corner with Donald A. Zinman
Donald A. Zinman is Professor of Political Science at Grand Valley State University. This interview is based on his new book, America’s First Wartime Election: James Madison, DeWitt Clinton, and the War of 1812 (University Press of Kansas, 2024). JF: […]
The Author’s Corner with Sarah Kornfield
Sarah Kornfield is Associate Professor of Communication and Affiliated Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at Hope College. This interview is based on her new book, Invoking the Fathers: Dangerous Metaphors and Founding Myths in Congressional Politics (Johns Hopkins University […]
The Author’s Corner with Keidrick Roy
Keidrick Roy is a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows. This interview is based on his new book, American Dark Age: Racial Feudalism and the Rise of Black Liberalism (Princeton University Press, 2024). JF: What led you to […]
The golden age of Wisconsin socialism
Here is historian Joshua Kluever at Jacobin on the rich history of Wisconsin socialism: From 1905 to 1945, the Wisconsin legislature passed over five hundred pieces of socialist-authored legislation. They accomplished this despite never holding more than 20 percent of […]
Is Trump a tyrant?
It depends what you mean by tyrant. Over at Engelsberg Ideas, historian Edmund Stewart brings some necessary context. Here is a taste: Trump is clearly not a tyrant yet. Will he become one? American institutions are stronger than many of […]
The Author’s Corner with Tyson Reeder
Tyson Reeder is Assistant Professor of History at Brigham Young University. This interview is based on his new book, Serpent in Eden: Foreign Meddling and Partisan Politics in James Madison’s America (Oxford University Press, 2024). JF: What led you to […]
Twenty years after his breakout speech, Obama is back tonight
Barack Obama is speaking at tonight’s Democratic National Convention. Twenty years ago, as a candidate for U.S. Senate, Obama delivered his breakout speech at the DNC in Boston. About three weeks before the 2004 convention, Obama was driving between Springfield […]
What if Biden and Trump tied?
Joshua Zeitz asks us to remember the Election of 1824: In the case of a tie, which hasn’t happened in exactly 200 years, the House decides the election, per the 12th Amendment, with each state delegation allotted one vote. Republicans […]
The Author’s Corner with Brian Judge
Brian Judge is a Policy Fellow at the Center for Human-Compatible AI at the University of California, Berkeley. This interview is based on his new book, Democracy in Default: Finance and the Rise of Neoliberalism in America (Columbia University Press, 2024). JF: […]
The Author’s Corner with Elizabeth Kalbfleisch
Elizabeth Kalbfleisch is Associate Professor of English at Southern Connecticut State University. This interview is based on her new book, Making the Radical University: Identity and Politics on the American College Campus, 1966–1991 (University of Massachusetts Press, 2024). JF: What led […]
The Author’s Corner with Scott Gac
Scott Gac is Professor of History and American Studies at Trinity College. This interview is based on his new book, Born in Blood: Violence and the Making of America (Cambridge University Press, 2024). JF: What led you to write Born […]
The Author’s Corner with Caleb Wellum
Caleb Wellum is Assistant Professor of U.S. History at the University of Toronto, Mississauga. This interview is based on his new book, Energizing Neoliberalism: The 1970s Energy Crisis and the Making of Modern America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023). JF: […]
The Author’s Corner with Scott Kamen
Scott Kamen is Assistant Professor of History at the University of New Mexico, Valencia. This interview is based on his new book, From Union Halls to the Suburbs: Americans for Democratic Action and the Transformation of Postwar Liberalism (University of […]
Will Nikki Haley pull off a Gary Hart-style upset in New Hampshire?
The New Hampshire primary–the first of the primary season–is scheduled for January 23, 2004. Sometimes strange things happen in the New Hampshire primary. Remember when: Henry Cabot Lodge beat Barry Goldwater in 1964? Edmund Muskie beat George McGovern in 1972? […]
The Author’s Corner with Emily Brooks
Emily Brooks is a Historian and Curriculum Writer at the New York Public Library’s Center for Educators and Schools. This interview is based on her new book, Gotham’s War within a War: Policing and the Birth of Law-and-Order Liberalism in World […]