Looking Inward: A Century of Domestic U.S. SurveillanceDi David P. Hadley

Justice Denied: The Killing of Trayvon Martin in Historical PerspectiveDi Hasan Kwame Jeffries

Iran-United States StandoffDi Annie Tracy Samuel

The economic crisis in Europe has had many predicting the end of the Eurozone and an end to the grand dreams of European unity. This month historian Donald A. Hempson III charts how the European Union and the Eurozone evolved out of a twin set of goals after World War II: to prevent European nations from going to war again and to foster economic pr…

Breaking Up Is Hard to Do: America's Love Affair with the Two-Party SystemDi Marc Horger

While the election of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio to head the Roman Catholic Church as Pope Francis received widespread international attention, in fact the last six months have seen the elevation of three Christian clerics to fill the top position in their respective churches. This month historian David Brakke examines the different processes i…

For many Americans, the "rise" of China over the past two decades is primarily measured in economic terms and is seen by many as an economic threat. For many Africans, however, the rise of China has meant investments, loans, and an alternative path to economic development than the one offered by Western institutions. This month historian Ousman Mur…

Since the attack on the World Trade Center in on September 11, 2001 the world has grown accustomed to reports of "suicide bombers." They are often portrayed as deluded or crazed, and they hold an almost lurid fascination for their willingness to kill themselves while killing others. This month, historian Jeffrey William Lewis puts what many of us s…

Egypt and Sudan are utterly dependent on the waters of the Nile River. Over the past century both of these desert countries have built several dams and reservoirs, hoping to limit the ravages of droughts and floods which have so defined their histories. Now Ethiopia, one of eight upriver states and the source of most of the Nile waters, is building…

Baby boomers, 78 million strong, are turning 65 at a rate of 4 million per year. The press, the government, and the medical community claim, often and loudly, that these numbers augur a mass dependency crisis. Such spokesmen envision a world of decrepit elders afflicted with chronic disease slurping their way through the country’s resources. This m…

In May 2012, Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced a partnership to offer on-line courses, free to anyone anywhere in the world. There is a historical resonance in MIT's involvement in the MOOC (massive open on-line courses) movement. MIT is a land-grant university and the announcement came during the 150th anni…

As we try to sort out the causes and consequences of armed conflicts around the globe, we seldom ask the question: where do all those weapons come from that make these wars possible? With the United States racking up a record shattering $66.3 billion in overseas weapons sales last year, the question has become even more pressing. This month, histor…

As the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the US Supreme Court case legalizing abortion, approaches, many Americans assume that legalized abortion is only as old as that ruling. In fact, as Anna Peterson discusses this month, abortion had only been made illegal at the turn of the 20th century. The different histories of abortion in Europe and the Uni…

After François Hollande's victory in the French presidential elections in May followed by socialist victories in the more recent legislative elections, many commentators declared a decisive swing to the Left in Europe's second largest economy, at a moment of intense political paralysis in the Eurozone. This month historian Alice Conklin explores wh…

In the midst of a presidential election campaign that pits a wealthy Republican businessman against a self-proclaimed warrior for the middle class, Americans are talking a lot these days about "class." Many credit the Occupy Wall Street movement with making "class warfare"—which, in its contemporary use, is really about tax policy—a driving issue i…

Global climate change has caused unprecedented changes to the Arctic environment, especially a rapid decrease in the summer sea ice sheet. While perilous to the survival of the iconic polar bear, many humans are watching these changes with an eye to what riches an open Arctic Ocean might bring forth: in oil and gas, mining, and open-water transport…

The events of the "Arab Spring" took the world by surprise. Yet, the roots of those rebellions run deep and nowhere more so than in Syria, where the fighting continues to be fierce and deadly. This month, Fred H. Lawson traces the history of one leading force in the ongoing Syrian uprising: the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood. The Brothers led a violent …

Many of us think of humanitarian intervention as a recent phenomenon of United States foreign policy. Certainly, critics of Barack Obama's intervention in Libya saw America's humanitarian involvement there as some new-fangled excuse to go mucking around in other countries. This month historian Jeff Bloodworth traces a much longer history of humanit…

The controversies generated by climate science in recent years center around the human relationship with the natural world and with natural resources. This month, historian John Brooke puts that critical question in historical perspective—deep historical perspective. For most of human history, our species had to struggle to survive powerful natural…

As the American combat mission in Iraq comes to end, the Obama administration and Pentagon officials have repeatedly assured the world that American involvement with Iraq will continue. They are undoubtedly right. Since the founding of Iraq in the aftermath of World War I, U.S. policy has included cooperation, confrontation, war, and, most recently…

In the summer of 2011, the streets of Dakar, Senegal filled with a mass of demonstrators "fed up" with the political machinations of President Abdoulaye Wade. Led by popular rappers, the oppositional collective "Y'En A Marre" became spokespeople for a generation at the end of their rope. As Senegal approaches critical elections in 2012, historian J…

Alongside the Presidential nomination process, the most prominent American political news stories these days are about the heated, high-stakes struggles over redistricting. The modern era of reapportioning state and federal legislative districts began almost exactly a half century ago when the U.S. Supreme Court decided Baker v. Carr (1962). With t…

With the ongoing East African drought crisis, the persisting threat of global climate change, and the world population now estimated at 7 billion, global concerns about food insecurity are again in the news. Little mentioned, however, is the continuing loss of genetic diversity of the foods we eat today—a trend that has rapidly accelerated since th…

1857, the 1870s, the 1890s, 1907, 1914, 1919, 1921: The United States faced widespread joblessness in all of these years, well before the Great Depression, not to mention today's Great Recession. As legislators in Washington prepare to debate another round of stimulus spending, and as unemployment reaches record highs, historian Daniel Amsterdam lo…

Energy has been in the news lately: The natural gas industry appears to be developing a world market; the U.S. Army is experimenting with "alternative" and "renewable" energy sources; "green" and "conservation" are being marketed as sound corporate management strategies. A half century ago the emphasis on natural gas, alternative and renewable fuel…

Faced with humanitarian crises, outbreaks of civil war, and working in some of the world's most unstable places, United Nations peacekeeping missions are taxed to their limit. This month, historian Donald Hempson traces the evolution of United Nations peacekeeping over more than six decades to highlight the challenges associated with an ever more r…

Forty years after President Richard Nixon declared a 'war on drugs,' the countries of Central and South America remain a central battleground. Though the horrific drug violence in Mexico has captured our attention recently, the history of the trade in the region stretches back much farther. This month, historian Steven Hyland explores how illicit d…

Turkey's Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, recently unveiled a plan so ambitious that even he calls it the 'Crazy Project.' The project aims to build a massive canal that will bypass the Bosporus waterway that bisects Istanbul—a rival to the Panama and Suez Canals in time for the Turkish Republic's centennial celebrations in 2023. The new canal…

On a fundraising trip to California in April, President Obama was confronted by protesters demanding better treatment for Pfc Bradley Manning, who has been at the center of the WikiLeaks controversy. Private Manning has been imprisoned for passing on tens of thousands of military and diplomatic documents to Wikileaks, in one of the greatest breache…

The devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan left the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant crippled and the world worrying about the consequences of this nuclear disaster. This month Craig Nelson looks at the long relationship the Japanese have had with nuclear power to explore the paradox of how the nation that suffered nuclear destruction in …

For more than 100 years, the United States and Iran have engaged in an ambivalent relationship. Although the American and Iranian people have usually regarded each other as friends, their governments have frequently treated each other as enemies. Throughout the 20th century and into the 21st, America and Iran have butted heads over issues as divers…

The Populists are back! Since the late 19th century, 'populist' is the name we've given to any American political movement that challenged either of the two major parties. But who are they, exactly? What does the label actually mean? And how has the meaning changed over the centuries? This month historian Marc Horger looks at the history of the ter…

In October 2010, the Brazilian Finance Minister made news by claiming an 'international currency war' had broken out. The term 'currency war' promptly became a buzz phrase with commentators and public officials warning about the dangers of these wars and their historical roots in the Great Depression. The U.S. government, in turn, has applied the i…

January 12, 2011 marks the grim one-year anniversary of the Haitian earthquake. In the past year, as Haitians have tried to rebuild from that disaster, they have suffered a cholera epidemic and flooding from Hurricane Tomas. Thousands remain homeless, buildings in ruins, and violence widespread. The political process offers little hope for relief. …

Alienation. In the 1950s and '60s, this concept was used by sociologists, psychologists, pundits, and critics to explain any number of social problems. Kids were 'alienated' from their parents and from the larger society; adults were 'alienated' from their work and from their communities. It was a powerful concept and one that defined a generation …

Eight years ago, the prospect of a victory by the leftist Workers' Party candidate Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in Brazil's 2002 presidential election sent shockwaves through international financial markets, prompting the IMF to step in with an emergency loan to steady the nerves of investors fearing default by a Lula government. This year, things cou…

This summer, Arizona's efforts to implement a controversial new local immigration statute fueled passions and mobilized all sides of the immigration debate. For the moment, the law remains in limbo after the United States filed suit and the U.S. District Court enjoined the most significant provisions of the new law. As Americans struggle to define …

In May, when an Israeli naval raid left nine self-described peace activists dead, commentators around the globe could scarcely stop themselves from saying 'here we go again.' Reports of violence and conflict between Israel and its neighbors are such regular occurrences in the news that they can have a numbing effect: the situation seems rooted in a…

As the 2010-2011 school year begins, a growing number of college students will turn to college loans to pay for their education, and as the cost of college continues to rise in the midst of the Great Recession, the size of those loans is getting bigger. When the class of 2014 graduates, they will be $22,000 in debt on average. As student loans grow…

Late in 2009, President Barack Obama awarded the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award to the organization Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA). While the economic and political crisis of the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe has drawn attention from around the world, the award served as a reminder that women in Zimbabwe have not only been suffering the burdens o…

Will the stadiums be ready? Will they be full? Will spectators and tourists be safe? These are the questions dominating media coverage as South Africa prepares to host the world's largest single-sport event, the 2010 soccer World Cup. The appearance in Africa for the first time of the highest profile competition in the world's most popular sport ha…

In the wake of a highly polarized battle over health care reform, Congress and the Obama Administration have begun to take up another major issue in domestic policy: reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). Put forth in 2001 by the George W. Bush administration and passed with overwhelming bipartisan support, NCLB has had a powerful …

Most years and for most people flu season is an annoyance. In 2009-10, however, with the pandemic of the H1N1 influenza strain the world was reminded that this seasonal occurrence can become widespread and potentially much more dangerous. As flu season in the northern hemisphere winds down, historian Ann Sealey looks at influenza pandemics past and…

For several years now, Australia, the driest inhabited continent, has been suffering perhaps the worst drought in its recorded history. Amidst disappearing rivers and empty dams, farmers have watched their fields go barren and their livestock perish, while urban dwellers face greater and greater restrictions on water use. Terrible wildfires have sw…

It is one of the most striking paradoxes of our time. Today, more people around the world go hungry than ever before in human history. At the same time, even more people are now classified as obese - part of what observers are calling an overweight 'epidemic' and health crisis. This month, historian Chris Otter explores the history of how we have c…

2009 was celebrated around the world as 'The Darwin Year.' It marked the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his landmark On the Origin of Species. While Darwin's theory of natural selection caused considerable controversy at the time, his ideas are now accepted as the foundation of all the mo…

It was a strange and haunting coincidence. Jaycee Dugard was rescued from the husband and wife who kidnapped her 18 years ago in California at virtually the same moment Elizabeth Smart confronted her kidnapper in a Utah courtroom. Once again, the nation was riveted by the phenomenon of child kidnapping. As historian Paula Fass describes, child abdu…

For those in the former Soviet Bloc, 1989 has been called an annus mirabilis -- a year of miracles. With astonishing speed, communist rule ended in Eastern Europe, the Berlin Wall came tumbling down, and the nature of Europe was changed entirely. In 2009, those countries, from Germany to Bulgaria to Poland, have all mounted celebrations of the twen…

As the population of the globe surges past 6 billion, India is on the verge of surpassing China as the world's most populous nation. For at least two centuries India has struck many Westerners as a place that is over-populated, famine-prone, and, as a result, a threat to global stability. In fact, as historian Mytheli Sreenivas details, the questio…

Renewed American efforts to 'win' the war in Afghanistan against a resurgent Taliban, as well as the ongoing war in Iraq, have kept the question of counterinsurgency strategy at the forefront of U.S. military and public life. This month, Peter R. Mansoor--a professor of history at Ohio State and a Colonel, U.S. Army (Retired) who served most recent…