History

Ending the Kennedy Romance

The first volume of Frederik Logevall’s biography of JFK reveals the scope of his ambition and the weakness of his political commitments.

May 27, 2021 issue

Peter C. Baker

The Bloodhound

A distinct thread of anger runs through all of Nicholson Baker’s work: anger at what people with power get up to in the shadows, anger at how they lie about it, anger at how we forget.

March 11, 2021 issue

Jenny Uglow

The Reader of Rocks

William Smith’s innovative use of the fossil record helped him create the first detailed geological map of England, Wales, and Scotland.

March 11, 2021 issue

James Romm

What Happened at Masada?

We know the Roman conquest of Masada only through the account of the enigmatic Jewish historian Josephus, whose shifting allegiances make his motives hard to discern.

January 14, 2021 issue

David W. Blight

An American Pogrom

Uncovering the truth about the 1898 massacre of black voters in Wilmington, North Carolina.

November 19, 2020 issue

Fires during the Haitian Revolution; engraving by Jean-Baptiste Chapuy, circa 1791

Fara Dabhoiwala

Speech and Slavery in the West Indies

Slavery was foundational to Britain’s prosperity and rise to global power.

August 20, 2020 issue

An East India Company official, probably the Scottish surgeon William Fullerton of Rosemount, with attendants; painting by Dip Chand, circa 1760–1764

Christopher de Bellaigue

The Pillage of India

William Dalrymple’s ‘The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire’ and Shashi Tharoor’s ‘Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India’

June 11, 2020 issue

A reunion of former slaves at the Cosmopolitan Baptist Church, Washington, D.C., 1917. From left to right, Lewis Martin, 100; Martha Elizabeth Banks, 104; Amy Ware, 103; and Reverend Simon P. Drew, who was born free.

James Oakes

An Unfinished Revolution

The ideological struggle to control the story of Reconstruction began at Appomattox.

December 5, 2019 issue

The Latest

Ariel Dorfman

A Taxonomy of Tyrants

Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s Strongmen delineates what the last century’s macho dictators have had in common.

May 27, 2021 issue

Anna Della Subin

The Rules of the Confidence Game

The Book of Charlatans provides an unusual glimpse into the street life of medieval Islamic societies rarely captured in more elevated Arabic literary sources.

May 27, 2021 issue

Alan Rusbridger

Two Centuries of ‘The Guardian’

There have been both lean and comfortable times over the decades, but the paper has held its editorial nerve.

May 27, 2021 issue

Mark Lilla

The Writer Apart

Who is the “nonpolitical” man Thomas Mann tried to defend even as he couldn’t escape politics?

May 13, 2021 issue

Tim Flannery

Why Did They Vanish?

Recent advancements in archaeology and genetics have granted us previously unimaginable insights into Neanderthal life.

May 13, 2021 issue

Martin Filler

Planning an Aryan Paradise

The Nazis had ambitious plans for reshaping Norwegian architecture and infrastructure.

May 13, 2021 issue

David S. Reynolds

When Slaves Fled to Mexico

A new book tells the forgotten story of fugitive slaves who found freedom south of the border.

May 13, 2021 issue

Ursula Lindsey

Ancient Egypt for the Egyptians

Europeans made—and carried away—many of the most famous discoveries of the “Golden Age of Egyptology,” but Egyptians today are beginning to reclaim their own past.

May 13, 2021 issue