The lines between autobiography and fiction are often permeable. Often a fiction writer's early work is grounded in the writer's own...

A Lesson in Sourcing Many publications credit Alexander Hamilton with a statement that any genius he possesses is rooted in diligent study a...

As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand. Josh Billings I am reflecting on a statement I recall from the Re...

American history runs over with irony and contradictions. The gap between common beliefs and the evidence is especially true of the American...

Robert F. Williams, Labor Organizer? Small things catch me. While reading a history book, I have a tendency to get pulled away on a tangen...

Reading the important introduction to Hayden White's Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europ e (1973), I am ...

It is the privilege of historians to be wise after the event, and the more foolish the historian the wiser he usually aims to be. C.L.R. Ja...

A constant pleasure of history are the little stories that pop out while reading primary sources. Often distracting from the purpose that ...

Max Euwe (1901-1981) was a mathematician and the fifth official World Chess Champion. The beginning of his now classic text, The Development...

Clint Eastwood's presentation at the Republican National Convention has provoked praise and criticism. Few are neutral. Eastwood is a fi...

Ohio State University Press is bringing out an important new book this spring. From the publisher's website :   Hemingway and the Bla...

On the last day of July 1971, the Grateful Dead played at the Yale Bowl. When this football stadium was built in 1914, it was "the lar...

Long, long after, When settlers put up beam and rafter, They asked of the birds: "Who gave this fruit? Who watched this fence till the ...

During his first term as President, Jefferson spent seventy-five hundred dollars—roughly a hundred and twenty thousand dollars in today’s ...

Missionaries Marcus and Narcissa Whitman lived in the Walla Walla valley 1836-1847. Grapes were among the plantings in their garden, but the...

Historical narrative imposes order upon chaos. The historian employs deception, omission, distraction, distortion, repetition, simplificatio...

A single train engine ran through a flock of sheep leaving a bloody mess. Then, Presley saw again, in his imagination, the galloping monster...

I've been neglecting my work on A Patriot's History of the United States and A People's History of the United States this fall...

Still working on an article that no one will ever read for an encyclopedia that no one will ever buy, I just came across a few marvelous art...

[Roland Barthes'] researches into the structure of narrative have granted him a conviction (or a reprieve), a conviction that all telli...