A wonderful essay about what we and our students can accomplish through close reading.

The publication date for my book on the history of policing American slavery has been moved up a month! Now available May 12, 2026! Thanks so much to those who have preordered! The Press is offering 30% off with the code, 01UNCP30 uncpress.org/978146969484...

Emilie Connolly's book about native dispossession and public is coming out next week. She's not on here to be embarrassed by me saying this is the proverbial "highly anticipated" book but at it is, at least by me. press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

Need a little midday distraction? I know I do, so I present to you JOYS OF JELL-O (1967), found in my grandmother's house.

Happy news: My new book -- Humanitarianism: A Very Short Introduction -- now has a cover and is available for preorder! The book is a concise history of humanitarianism in an international and global perspective, from the 18th century to the present. More info here: global.oup.com/academic/pro...

Teaching a favorite session today on #FrederickDouglass #Narrative — after decades of scrounging cheap original printings (1799 - 1832) of the #ColumbianOrator … I finally have enough to give one to each student & say, DISCUSS: What kinds of things could an enslaved teenager learn with this book?

There is an incredible amount of good history being done at the local level and in small museums--the folks who will actually engage the public during this anniversary

Not available until June 2026, but we have a cover! #earlymodern #skystorians

Want to learn more about early American history from the 25 years of articles and reviews on Commonplace? Select a topic on our Subject page that you want to know more about, such as Slavery and Abolition. Click on the tag and it creates a new subject page: 🗃️ commonplace.online/article/subj...

Got my advance reader copies of Living in a DAISY Age yesterday! They look amazing! It’s hard to put into words how I feel holding a physical copy of my book 🤯 Preorder: www.simonandschuster.com/books/Living...

MORE SHOCKING HAY FRAUDS!!! On the arrest of Captain Ferguson at his office in the Alexandria depot, a Mr. Rowland (a clerk and also Ferguson's brother in law) "abstracted" (i.e., took) a package containing $18,500 worth of federal bonds--equivalent to about half a million dollars today!

lincoln-institute.org/scholarship-... The Abraham Lincoln Institute announces a travel grant of $1,000.00 (one thousand dollars) for graduate students in the Civil War field. #Skystorians #CivilWarHistory

Last week, a very special package from @uncpress.bsky.social arrived! I was traveling and eager to touch the Word files turned into PDF files transformed into real paper between glossy covers. Canal Dreamers is a dream come true for me! My nine-year-old son snapped a perfect memory of the moment. 🗃️

So exciting!

So, here it is. Thanks to a new state law that was NEVER DEBATED, Indiana University has committed itself to abolishing majors in African-American/African Diaspora Studies: American Studies; Art History; French; Italian; Religious Studies etc. DOZENS of majors. www.ipm.org/news-section...

Interesting conversation here about AI and higher ed. One small moment stood out to me. It's possible that LLM's know how to create watermarks in everything they produce that would make AI generated text easy to detect. But of course, they're choosing not to do it. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/i...

Very pleased to announce preorders for my forthcoming book, Living in the D.A.I.S.Y. Age: The Music, Culture, and World De La Soul Made (Atria/One Signal), is available wherever you buy your books. Coming out January 2026! The preorder link is in the comments. I can't wait for you all to read!

About that New York Times Article on "A.I." and History: https://updates.wcaleb.org/2025/06/17/about-that-new-york-times.html

www.clarku.edu/news/2025/06... #Skystorians we’ve lost a friend and a great scholar, Amy Richter of Clark University. Please repost.

Just updated my U.S. History Research Toolkit on @padlet.com. It gathers links to digitized primary source collections for students in research courses—NO login required. Check it out! 🗃️ padlet.com/kristenepps/...

@kerileighmerritt.bsky.social once argued for the historical value of coroners' reports by explaining that "how people die tells you a lot about society." That really stuck with me. The 1830s Boston Coroners Inquests offer a sad but deeply revealing glimpse into the lives of poor African Americans 🗃️

bsky.app/profile/geau... today in AI *makes* extra, useless work: now scholars, authors, and journalists have to defend themselves - their expertise, their reputations, their dignity, their safety - from hallucinated horseshit

Supremely helpful thread for anyone making their first visit to NARA this summer 🗃️

Happy Memorial Day to everyone - especially those who remember how the holiday began: That is, as a day to commemorate those who died saving the country from an *actual* attempt to destroy it

We’re doing a thing! Want to talk about how to do a conference? Come ask somebody who’s made all the mistakes and survived: Me! . . . and also Will and @carolyneastman.bsky.social, who make far fewer mistakes ;)

Author copies have arrived!!!! It's real!!! @yalepress.bsky.social yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...

Appreciating op-eds today abt the American Rev military origins 250 yrs ago at Lexington & Concord. April 18-19, 1775 also instructive about the fog of info & misinfo, communication & planning, and the importance of govt docs. An April 23 report for ex. called Paul Revere "way-laid & slain." 1/

It's publication day for "Green & Blue: Irish Americans in the Union Military: 1861-1865"! Now available for purchase in hardcopy and ebook. It examines the experience of the c.250,000 Irish Americans who served in U.S. forces, making use of 100s of letters by enlisted men to wives and mothers.

Two-thirds of both houses of Congress could undo this whenever they want by passing a bill over Trump's veto taking all power to set tariff rates away from him. Tariffs are set by law. The Constitution gives the president no power over tariffs--only our current laws do that.

Good day to remember that a US President has no inherent power over tariffs whatsoever. It’s not like war powers or pardons. It’s entirely delegated by Congress to deal with emergencies. GOP Congress cld modify that law tonight and bring this to a screeching halt.

To deride any public act as “merely performative” is to assume the act begins and ends with the actor. But the whole point of a public act is that others see it, react to it, make of it what they will. The significance of public actions depends less on intent than on reception.

A new history of manifest destiny. This brilliant book officially drops April 15, preorder your copy now!

In honor of #MarchMadness, let's talk about how all 8 men's teams playing in Providence this week are threatened by the Musk/Trump Admin. If you love college sports, you're going to have to stand up for colleges!!!!

This essay is so, so good.

Want to drift into the currents of the past? The cover for "Canal Dreamers" will pull you in! Love this watery confection by @uncpress.bsky.social. I'm so excited for the book's release later this year. 🗃️🌊🌎📘

Coming soon from UNC Press: The Sixth Wisconsin and the Long Civil War: The Biography of a Regiment. uncpress.org/book/9781469...

It has a cover! I am so excited to have The Predatory Sea: Human Trafficking and Captivity in the Seventeenth-Century Caribbean coming out September 2025 with @pennpress.bsky.social! 🗃️

Every Liverpool fan RN 😱

Opportunity: 2-yr postdoc in Civil War Era (emphasis on era) with the Virginia Center for Civil War Studies and Virginia Tech History Department. I'm happy to answer questions. 🗃️https://careers.pageuppeople.com/968/cw/en-us/job/532059/postdoctoral-associate

It’s been a long time coming… so thrilled to share the cover (and Oxford UP website last in 🧵) for my book, _Lineage: Genealogy and the Power of Connection in Early America_, pub date 7.2.25 (but will ship, so they say very enticingly, mid-June. 1/ #VastEarlyAmerica 🗃️

indeed. employers also want workers to know spreadsheets but that doesn’t mean we have to use spreadsheets to learn about Emily Dickinson

A short thread about the surprising truth of 19th century train robberies—specifically, those of Jesse James. Let's ask a question about "social bandits": Did they target the big corporations—in this case, railroads? The answer shows how well historians must know the world they write about. 1/

My wife just asked our kids, “is the bacon to your liking?” We are ruled by tyrants….

And check out Harriet Hayden’s amazing carte-de-visite albums, kindly digitized by the (nearby) Boston Athenæum 🗃️ cdm.bostonathenaeum.org/digital/coll...

A beautiful, moving memorial illumination at Antietam National Battlefield Park last night 🗃️

New authors: if no one ever told you, YOU are your biggest advocate when it comes to promotion. I’ve had to personally contact booksellers to get mine into their store. Just today I got a response from a bookstore that they’d love to carry Slavery on the Periphery. You’ve got this! #skystorians

You spend years researching and writing, but after passing the manuscript off to the press you almost stop thinking about the project that dominated your working days. Yet one day, many months later, a book shows up on your doorstep. Welcome to the world, A Union Tested. ugapress.org/book/9780820...

Today is official pub day for my new book _Dread Danger_! Available from Cambridge University Press via this link: www.cambridge.org/core/books/d...