For medical reasons, I will be online less for several weeks. Your good energy and kindness are very welcome.

Elon Musk’s cuts to U.S.A.I.D. led to some 700,000 deaths, Atul Gawande says. www.newyorker.com/news/the-new...

After the Civil War, Congress anticipated white lawmakers in the South would use the criminal legal system to stop Black people from voting, so they readmitted southern states under strict conditions. States have been violating those conditions since.

Vodun Day, Benin — Julio Sacristan, 2020 www.koltstudio.com/julio-sacris...

I’d guess a full 1/4 of active paleontologists today wanted to be Alan Grant when they grew up. I don’t know if another actor has had such a tangible impact on science. I hope Sam Neill knew that at least a little. Rest easy.

Here's Parkinsonia, one of the most recognisable ammonites. Named after James Parkinson, a surgeon (first to recognise Parkinson's disease), and a palaeontologist (who drew for Mantell), and a radical social reformist, activist for universal suffrage, suspected of scheming to assassinate the King!

Cartoon by @deadder.bsky.social.

Really excited to share that JGAPE has published my article, "Doubly Intolerable: Gender, Union Busting, and the Fear of Catholic Power in the Loeb Affair, 1915–1917." It looks at how sexism and anti-Catholicism acted together to union bust the Chicago Teachers' Federation.

On the new episode of Historians & Their Histories, Rachel Wiedman speaks about her research on gender and political culture in the Civil War era and how Northerners used the language of manhood to praise and condemn their political representatives. Listen here: www.masshist.org/podcast/hath...

A new book by my friend Sharon Salinger, just published by University of Virginia Press: *Perceived in Print: Indigenous American and French Ideas of the Other*. I have known Sharon for decades and she is truly an outstanding historian. Can’t wait to read it! www.upress.virginia.edu/title/10207/

108/158 2026 Official Submission #MAAHStoneAtoZ @marcusrediker.bsky.social @vikingbooks.bsky.social @penguinrandomhouse

Exciting book news! I Disagree is on sale for 25% off until the end of the day today for all Barnes & Noble rewards and premium members. Pre-order yours now! www.barnesandnoble.com/w/i-disagree...

Justice Brown Jackson's argument for birthright citizenship is very moving. I recommend reading it in full. An excerpt with alt-text below. “The Reconstruction Amendments were an anticaste, antisubordination reset for the Nation, not a mere spot treatment for the dark stain of slavery.” — KBJ

NEW EPISODE ALERT! It’s the season 2 finale, as we celebrate the summer blockbuster and the semiquincentennial with @americanstudier.bsky.social and INDEPENDENCE DAY (1996). We talk disaster films, masculinity at the End of History, MARS ATTACKS! (1996), and more! m.youtube.com/watch?v=3MZy...

One-minute lesson narrated by @sifill.bsky.social on the significance of the 14th Amendment in the @250to250.bsky.social series by @hcrichardson.bsky.social Learn more by following The 14th Amendment Center @the14thcenter.bsky.social at Howard University Law School. youtu.be/l347V4pJF5E?...

Sam Neill Remembered: Karl Urban, Toni Collette & Prime Ministers Pay Tribute To “Beautiful Man” deadline.com/2026/07/sam-...

@hcrichardson.bsky.social turned decades of studying democracy into a nightly act of devotion, writing alone past midnight, no sponsors, no noise, just truth and care. She’s given millions a place to breathe, to understand, to feel less alone. Grateful for her light in the dark. TYSM HCR! #Pinks

Crucial information on the history and culture of the United States. #China #India #policy

Happy Henry David Thoreau Day! memorydaycalendar.blogspot.com/p/july-nomin...

Would love if you could add my public report and StoryMap published this week by the City of Alexandria, Virginia on histories of slavery and emancipation at Alexandria's City Hall & Market Square. #ScholarSunday is weekly highlight for me. Thank you! bsky.app/profile/hist...

Nobel Laureate Economist Angus Deaton: "Inequality has risen not only due to wealth generation from innovation or creation, but also through upward transfers from workers. It is not inequality itself that is hurting people, but the mechanisms of enrichment." Read more: evonomics.com/nobel-econom...

Check out “Until the Last Gun is Silent” by @mattdelmont.bsky.social—a brilliant,searing history of Black soldiers & anti-war activists struggling against racism & charges of betrayal to highlight the battle for justice at the heart of America’s Vietnam War www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/736800...

@larryglickman.bsky.social writes, "For Trump and a group of conservative legal scholars and politicians to demand now that courts ignore the legal consensus of the past century-plus is...to command Americans to collectively engage in an act of historical amnesia" www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

Why do Latina/o households have just 22 cents on the dollar compared to white ones? "The project demonstrates how wealth inequality is the cumulative result of systems that have limited access to opportunity across generations." #racialwealthgap latino.ucla.edu/research/his...

Engage your students in the history happening today, all around them—Our colleagues @bunkhistory.bsky.social now have over 15,000 sources integrated into the archive, connecting past & present. These include UR DSL maps, videos, podcasts, & Ed Ayers’ travelogue. www.bunkhistory.org/resources?so...

A study concluded that the uninhibited pumping of groundwater by farmers, cities and corporations around the world now accounts for 68% of the total loss of fresh water at the latitudes where most people live. (Published July 2025)

Thanks for hanging with us this weekend for 180 posts on the Declaration of Independence! The Colored Conventions deeply believed in the power of saying these words aloud. We need to hear & heed them. Watch this space for grand NEW things coming this *week*!

An intro for news faces 👋! I'm a presidential historian, author of a couple of books including *Making the Presidency: John Adams and the Precedents That Forged the Republic*, and Executive Director of the George Washington Presidential Library. And I have a four-legged sidekick who is my heart.

George Floyd. Breonna Taylor. Ahmaud Arbery. Deeply ingrained, systemic racism is responsible for an incalculable loss & horrific suffering in our communities. I must do better. Listening, amplifying, celebrating, supporting, fighting. #BlackLivesMatter

Hundreds of words about a “second Reconstruction” and zero mention of Black Americans. Not even a nod to the ways race has and still creates dysfunction in the government. A massive underestimation of how race divides people and how that limits what is politically possible. Very disappointing.

You gotta have a code.

Liberal Currents mentioned!

What a great way to start this Sunday. Thank you @americanstudier.bsky.social

Essential collection to understand the contexts behind the deaths of Lindsay Graham and Mitch McConnell.

Got a little starter version of this up! I'll get a starter pack up and add to the list tomorrow. feat. @gillianbrockell.com, @melbuer.bsky.social, @katelynburns.com, @mskellymhayes.bsky.social, @marisakabas.bsky.social, @ruwithsonali.bsky.social, @theradr.bsky.social, @kattenbarge.bsky.social

Daily SCOTUS Historical Fact-Check, Part 1: I'm starting a daily SCOTUS fact-check after a whopper term, full of erroneous historical whoppers. 1. Justice Kavanaugh concurred in the result. Why did he bend over backward to call it a dissent? open.substack.com/pub/jedshuge...

New World Calculation: The Making of Numbers in Colonial America comes out Aug. 25th! I'm excited to share this with you. I wrote about the lessons about sex, race, class, and power Americans have always learned when they learned to work with numbers. Pre-order here: tinyurl.com/newworldcalculation

Discriminatory instincts, encoded into flawed databases, handed back to police as algorithmic confirmation. Dr. Asvatha Babu maps the injustice baked into one of the world's most expansive surveillance systems—a system most Indians don't know exists.

Tomorrow is the deadline for submitting a comment to stop the administration from dismantling U.S. science. There are nearly 280,000 public comments filed so far! But! Do not assume they are all, or even most, against the proposal. This is a key pillar of Project 2029 - wind down federal R&D.

Hi. We're in the Age of Diarrhea. I'm a global health expert on helping children survive diarrhea. Here's what to do if you might have picked up cyclospora. 🧵 1. Call your primary care if possible. 2. Take oral rehydration therapy, which isn't just drinking fluids. 1/

Good look at Phila resistance: The more Trumpers try to hide slavery history, the harder Black and white locals push back. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026... (We went out of our way to see the censored exhibit last visit & we’re not alone in that.)

The UN has recognised the trafficking of enslaved Africans and racialised chattel enslavement as humanity’s gravest crime. Leading politicians from Africa and the Caribbean made it clear that the next step must be tangible action.

Historian here, I made this point over 25 years ago. share.google/H8vu6cAxY1tL...

Most US analysts think that when the MoU was signed, the flow of oil and gas through Hormuz resumed. Most US analysts are idiots.

Isn’t Money Weird?

As more of my valued colleagues face the threat of redundancy, here’s a quick reminder that it takes years and years of public investment to train an academic. Cutting someone with this wealth of experience loose isn’t “saving” anything. It is a massive waste of our collective resources.

Amazing project by Bryant Simon on public restrooms and social inequality. Always great work from BWAR. Thanks, @americanstudier.bsky.social #EducationSky

Mel Brooks's Blazing Saddles (1974) is a phenomenal film that fits into a much larger tradition of cultural works that challenge Hollywood and vaudevillian whitewashing of the American West This week I reviewed it in conversation with Deadwood (2004-2006; 2019) and Springsteen's album Western Stars

Sunday morning? A great resource to start your day. #BookSky

Take me to your leader: human becomings, non-Euclidean org design and lawn mowing. www.whiteowl.net.au/blog/2020/2/...