Forgetting Fascism
Never fully exorcised, the memory of Italy’s fascist past is fading.
History Matters
Thoughts, opinions and commentary on all things historical.
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A Single Woman in West Africa
The diaries of a young teacher reveal the complexities of racial tensions in the Gold Coast.
Rewriting the Classics
A translator alters more than a text’s language, turning the process into a political statement.
Private Lives? Leave Me Out
As technology changes, so do ideas about the borders of the self and the nature of privacy.
Making a Monster
The worst monsters to the Anglo-Saxon mind were those who thought like humans but chose to act differently.
Richard Nixon’s Opening to China and Closing the Gold Window
Like President Trump, Nixon made a virtue of unpredictability. In the case of his China strategy, this paid off while his decision to close the gold window did not.
The Battle of Rorke’s Drift
Why is the siege such a popular and controversial imperial episode?
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
In their quest to collect all the knowledge of the known world, Roman authors also recorded the strange and the fabulous.
Medieval Millennials
When does a boy become a man? Medieval millennials were just as hard to define as those of today.
New Orleans: The Mississippi Bubble and the Big Easy
The unusual circumstances of the founding of New Orleans in 1718 have had a lasting impact on its culture.