Bad Idea
Their reasons varied but legislators on both sides of the aisle opposed US entry into World War I, a position that historians of all stripes endorse even today.
Michael Kazin teaches history at Georgetown University. His latest book is American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation. His next book, War Against War: The American Fight for Peace, 1914-1918, will be published in the fall of 2016.
SMH
Trump says he’ll put America First, which of course carries echoes of the old isolationist and anti-Semitic movement—which Trump has apparently never. even. heard. of.
Prophet?
Bernie Sanders, who has a lot in common with the silver-tongued populist who drove the Democrats toward progressivism a century ago, could likewise shape his party’s future for decades.
Bro Democracy
‘Bush’s Brain’ looks back nostalgically to the election of 1896, when lots of people voted but also when politics was the purview of white males, and a few white males at that.
ORIGIN STORY
In his authorized bio ‘The Idealist,’ Niall Ferguson delivers an engrossing story of the early Henry Kissinger. Too bad it’s entirely uncritical of our most debated statesman.
FRACTURED
Radical leftists never take control in the halls of American power, but as a new history demonstrates, they have still wrought genuine social change over the last half-century.
Prize Target
Erik Larson has made a fortune exploring forgotten corners of history, but can he succeed as well when the story he’s telling is all too familiar to its audience?
Woodrow Wilson
A new biography makes the case for Woodrow Wilson as an unrecognized great American president. Michael Kazin isn’t convinced.
Fed Up
A new book filled with newly released FBI documents paints a damning portrait of the feds spying on, harassing, and denouncing largely innocent Berkeley students in the 1960s—with Ronald Reagan as a star FBI instigator and informant. Michael Kazin on Seth Rosenfeld’s Subversives.
Not too long ago the labor movement and the left in America were close allies, but now, says historian Michael Kazin, labor has lost its voice and is under assault.