intellectual history

• 
• SOURCE: Public Books
  1/25/2021
  

  J. M. Keynes and the Visible Hands

  by Kent Puckett

  John Maynard Keynes's disgust at the outcome of the peace negotiations at the end of the Great War led him to write a scathing and influential book about the economic impact of the Treaty of Versailles. Unfortunately, the account, which overstated the economic devastation imposed on Germany, fueled Hitler's propaganda and made the rest of Europe unable to perceive the threat of German rearmament. 

• 
• SOURCE: Public Books
  1/18/2021
  

  When Black Humanity is Denied

  by Edna Bonhomme

  Enlightenment institutions – the prison, science, and asylums – are organized through binaries that draw boundaries between people who are and are not able to exercise freedom. Black artistic work supports Black freedom by challenging those boundaries. 

• 
• SOURCE: Harvard Magazine
  12/16/2020
  

  The American Exception: How Faith Shapes Economic and Social Policy

  by Benjamin M. Friedman

  Historian Benjamin Friedman's new book examines the importance of changing religious ideas in American Protestantism as influences on the development of social and economic policy. Part of the concluding chapter is excerpted here. 

• 
• SOURCE: Boston Review
  12/15/2020
  

  Caste Does Not Explain Race

  by Charisse Burden-Stelly

  A reviewer takes Isabel Wilkerson's book "Caste" to task for failure to examine the connections between racism and economic exploitation. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Economist
  12/11/2020
  

  An Inspiring History of the Enlightenment

  A new book focuses on the generation of the body of Enlightenment thought through debate and dispute which foreshadows many of today's debates about the merits of universal humanism and liberal democracy. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  11/12/2020
  

  Newton’s Daunting Masterpiece had a Surprisingly Wide Audience, Historians Find

  Two historians of science have traced the ownership and sharing of Sir Isaac Newton's first edition of "Principia" to conclude that the book was more widely read and influential among Enlightenment thinkers than previously believed. 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  10/1/2020
  

  The Most Essential Books of the Trump Era are Barely About Trump at All

  Most of the wave of political books on the Trump administration fixate on the President's personality or disregard for norms and niceties instead of evaluating the structural factors that made his presidency possible. 

• 
• SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
  9/1/2020
  

  New Black Intellectual Histories

  Brandon Byrd argues that researching the African American intellectual tradition requires methodological flexibility and innovation to understand how Black thinkers have worked to produce ideas while being excluded from the spaces where intellectual work has typically been done. 

• 
• SOURCE: USA Today
  6/21/2020
  

  Prize-Winning Historian Robert D. Richardson, Who Wrote About American Thinkers, Dies At Age 86

  The biographer and intellectual historian was the winner of the Bancroft Prize in 2007 for William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism.

• 
• SOURCE: The American Prospect
  5/18/2020
  

  Keynes and the Good Life

  by Jeffrey Sachs

  Keynes did not give us a checklist of dos and don’ts other than general ones: Don’t waste human talents and physical resources through wanton unemployment, avoidable wars, or breakdowns of social and trade relations.

• 
• SOURCE: Slate
  5/3/2020
  

  The 1918 Flu Pandemic Killed Millions. So Why Does Its Cultural Memory Feel So Faint?

  by Rebecca Onion

  According to scholar Elizabeth Outka, the tragedy haunts modernist literature between the lines.

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  4/21/2020
  

  Andrew Cuomo Has Revived Franklin Roosevelt’s Language of Leadership

  by Christopher M. Florio

  Recognizing our interdependence is the key to surviving the covid-19 pandemic

• 
• SOURCE: Society for U.S. Intellectual History
  3/30/2020
  

  Writing an Intellectual History of the President’s Cabinet

  by Lindsay M. Chervinsky

  Historian Lindsay M. Chervinsky discusses the methodology behind her latest book on George Washington's cabinet.

• 
• SOURCE: Society for U.S. Intellectual History Blog
  2/9/20
  

  Richard Cándida Smith Reviews *Duress: Imperial Durabilities In Our Times*

  by Richard Cándida Smith

  A review of Ann Laura Stoler's Duress: Imperial Durabilities In Our Times.

• 
• SOURCE: Common Dreams
  1/26/20
  

  Ten Years After Howard Zinn’s Death — Lessons from the People’s Historian

  by Bill Bigelow 

  Now is an especially good time to remember some of Howard Zinn’s wisdom.

• 
• SOURCE: Boston Review
  1/26/20
  

  Missing Zinn

  by Cornel West an Mordecai Lyon

  On the tenth anniversary of radical historian Howard Zinn’s death, Cornel West opens up about their friendship and what Zinn would have made of the decade—including whether he would have voted for Bernie.

• 
• 12/22/19
  

  Is Donald Trump a Conservative?

  by Jonathan Montano

  Does Trump fit the mold defined by historians on conservatism? Does his brand of populism even fit the classical ideology of conservative populist thought?

• 
• SOURCE: The New York Times
  10/18/19
  

  When James Baldwin Squared Off Against William F. Buckley Jr.

  Nicholas Buccola's book, "The Fire Is Upon Us: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate Over Race in America" examines the debates between Baldwin and Buckley.  The book is available now.  

• 
• SOURCE: Society for US Intellectual History
  11/7/2019
  

  An Intellectual Conversion Narrative

  by Andrew Klumpp

  Klumpp reflects on USIH, what it means to be an intellectual historian and the USIH community

• 
• SOURCE: The Washington Post
  September 15, 2019
  

  William F. Buckley Jr. vs. James Baldwin: A racial showdown on the American dream

  Hundreds of thousands of people have watched the riveting 1965 debate between the two writers — one white, the other black — on YouTube.