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On Americans’ connections to the larger world.
Palestinian Arab women and children in Israel, 1949

American Jews Have Fought for Palestinian Rights Since Israel Was Born

My research shows that this tradition runs deep.
by Geoffrey Levin via Slate
This publication restricts nonsubscriber access to some or all of its articles.
on January 28, 2024
Two people hanging poster of a man looking for his family, holding a photo of himself as a child.

Searching for Guatemala’s Stolen Children

Journalist Rachel Nolan investigates tens of thousands of forced adoptions and the U.S. policy that enabled them.
by Cora Currier via The New Republic
This publication restricts nonsubscriber access to some or all of its articles.
on January 25, 2024
A top hat with poppies and the words "Merchants of Addiction", and pictures of wealthy American opium smugglers.

The Blue-Blood Families That Made Fortunes in the Opium Trade

Long before the Sacklers appeared on the scene, families like the Astors and the Delanos cemented their upper-crust status through the global trade in opium.
by Amitav Ghosh via The Nation
This publication restricts nonsubscriber access to some or all of its articles.
on January 23, 2024
A migrant child is lowered from a trailer in Jesus Carranza, in the Mexican state of Veracruz, in November 2021.

What Does the United States Owe Central America?

A new work of nonfiction revives a history that some would sooner see forgotten.
by Gus Bova via Texas Observer on January 22, 2024
US National Security council meets in 1967

How LBJ Forged the US-Israel Alliance

The special relationship between the United States and Israel was cemented by the support offered by Lyndon B. Johnson throughout the sixties.
by Ronan Mainprize via Engelsberg Ideas on January 22, 2024
Refugees board an Air America plane in Da Nang, Vietnam, on Jan. 23, 1968.

Pensions for the “Deep State:” Republicans Push Benefits for the CIA’s Secret Vietnam-Era Airline

Marco Rubio and Glenn Grothman want to recognize the contribution of Air America, the CIA airline that supported secret wars in Laos and Cambodia.
by Ken Klippenstein via The Intercept on January 22, 2024
U.S. Ambassador Daniel Moynihan discusses violence in the Middle East at the U.N. Security Council
partner

Changing Views on Israel Isolating the U.S. at the U.N.

Americans have been isolated at the U.N. on Israel for a half century — but that used to prompt fierce debate.
by Sean T. Byrnes via Made By History on January 18, 2024
Files in Guatemala’s Historical Archive of the National Police. Photo by Luis Soto.

In the Best Interest of the Child

A new book gets inside Guatemala’s international adoption industry and the complicated context of deciding a child’s welfare.
by Rachel Nolan, Erin Siegal McIntyre via Guernica on January 16, 2024
Painting of the Mexican railway

On the Shared Histories of Reconstruction in the Americas

In the 19th century, civil wars tore apart the US, Mexico and Argentina. Then came democracy’s fight against reaction.
by Evan C. Rothera via Aeon on January 16, 2024
A photo collage of African American activists.

Black Activists Began Traveling to Palestine in the 1960s. They Never Stopped.

“This isn’t about being for one group or against another. It’s about basic human rights.”
by Nia T. Evans via Mother Jones on January 15, 2024
"The Book of Jewish Food" by Claudia Roden.

The Desk Dispatch: Layla Schlack on What Jewish Food Means to Her

"Frustratingly, Talmudically, Jewish food is simply what Jews eat," she writes.
by Layla Schlack via From The Desk Of Alicia Kennedy on January 15, 2024
A parade in Rio de Janeiro consisting of Brazilian Expeditionary Force soldiers and American 10th Mountain Division soldiers.

Skis, Samba, and Smoking Snakes: An Unlikely World War II Partnership

What happened when glacier-goggled American ski troops and samba-loving Brazilian soldiers fought side-by-side halfway across the world?
by Carson Teuscher via Origins on January 13, 2024
Jean-Jacques Dessalines

The U.S. Has Never Forgiven Haiti

What 220 years of Haitian independence means for how we tell the story of abolition and the development of human rights around the world.
by Leslie M. Alexander via Public Books on January 11, 2024
Under the Shadow
Podcast
Under the Shadow

The Beginning: Monroe and Migration

This episode surveys the legacy of the 1823 Monroe Doctrine and its transformation from an anti-colonial statement into a justification for U.S. intervention across Latin America. Linking coups, military actions, sanctions, and support for authoritarian regimes to modern migration, this episode follows migrants in Tapachula, Mexico, arguing that today's migration crisis cannot be understood without examining two centuries of U.S. influence in the hemisphere.
January 9, 2024
Cuban refugee children.

When the U.S. Welcomed the ‘Pedro Pan’ Migrants of Cuba

Cold War America resettled unaccompanied minors as an anti-communist imperative. Today, the nation forgets this history.
by John A. Gronbeck-Tedesco via Zócalo Public Square on January 8, 2024
A baby awaiting adoption near Guatemala City.

Guatemala’s Baby Brokers: How Thousands of Children Were Stolen For Adoption

Baby brokers often tricked Indigenous Mayan women into giving up newborns; kidnappers took others. International adoption is now seen as a cover for war crimes.
by Rachel Nolan via The Guardian on January 4, 2024
Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat shake hands at the White House

A Brief History of Peace Talks, Israel & the Palestinians

Who's to blame for failures in 2000, 2001 & 2008?
by Zachary Foster via Palestine, In Your Inbox on December 29, 2023
A faux Brazilian village constructed for Henry II and Catherine de’ Medici on the banks of the Seine in Rouen, France, and inhabited by fifty Tupinambá people who were forcibly brought there from Brazil, 1550.

The Discovery of Europe

A new book investigates the indigenous Americans who were brought to or traveled to Europe in the 1500s—a story central to the beginning of globalization.
by Álvaro Enrigue via New York Review of Books
This publication restricts nonsubscriber access to some or all of its articles.
on December 28, 2023
Illustration of Joe Biden and Benjamin Netanyahu.

How Joe Biden Became America's Top Israel Hawk

The president once said “Israel could get into a fistfight with this country and we’d still defend” it. That is now clearer than ever.
by Noah Lanard via Mother Jones on December 22, 2023
Sera Koulabdara and four members of a Laos demining team scanning the ground in grassy area.

Fifty Years of Living with America’s Unexploded Bombs

Laos was collateral damage in the U.S.' secret war. The wounds are visible in the land and in generations still waiting on justice.
by Sera Koulabdara via Zócalo Public Square on December 21, 2023
Lagoon in Majuro Atoll with tropical trees in the background and a rainbow in the sky

On the Map

The flag of Bikini Atoll looks a lot like the American flag. It has the same red and white stripes. The resemblance is intentional.
by Carleigh Beriont via Process: A Blog for American History on December 12, 2023
An electrified barbed-wire fence around Fort Bliss in El Paso, Tex., near the Mexican border, in 1915 or 1916.

The Long, Ugly History of Barbed Wire at the U.S.-Mexico Border

The first barbed wire border fences were proposed to keep out Chinese migrants. They’ve been debated for over a century.
by David Dorado Romo via Retropolis
This publication restricts nonsubscriber access to some or all of its articles.
on December 9, 2023
Joel Roberts Poinsett (left). The poinsettia, which takes its name from Poinsett (right).

Poinsettia Day, the Monroe Doctrine, and U.S.-Mexican Relations

The troubled history of the famous poinsettia plant.
by Lindsay Schakenbach Regele via Origins on December 9, 2023
Japanese prime minister and minister of war Hideki Tojo on trial in 1947.

Japan’s Incomplete Reckoning With World War II Crimes

Gary Bass’s new book asks why the tribunal in Tokyo after World War II was so ineffective.
by Aryeh Neier via The New Republic
This publication restricts nonsubscriber access to some or all of its articles.
on December 7, 2023
Liberian workers at the Firestone Plantation carrying buckets of latex in buckets on their shoulders.

The Human Price of American Rubber

Segregated lives of pride and peril on Firestone's Liberian plantations.
by Gregg Mitman via The Disappearing Spoon on December 7, 2023
Blowback
Podcast
Blowback

"We Can Live With That"

The warlord years, and the rise of the Taliban.
December 6, 2023
A collage of Meir Kahane, a pistol, and the outline of Israel and Palestine on a yellow background.

The American Origins of Israel’s Armament Campaign

How Kahanism infiltrated the political mainstream.
by Rafi Reznik via The Dial on December 5, 2023
Photographer shooting Henry Kissinger on Air Force One.

Notes From the Front

Henry Kissinger’s Vietnam diary shows that he knew the war was lost a decade before it ended.
by Thomas A. Bass via The American Scholar on December 4, 2023
The aftermath of U.S. bombs in Neak Luong, Cambodia, on Aug. 7, 1973.

Kissinger's Bombings Likely Killed Hundreds of Thousands of Cambodians and Set Path for Khmer Rouge

A Cambodian scholar who fled the Khmer Rouge as a child writes about the legacy of Henry Kissinger, who died at the age of 100 on Nov 28, 2023.
by Sophal Ear via The Conversation on November 30, 2023
Henry Kissinger

Henry Kissinger, War Criminal Beloved by America's Ruling Class, Finally Dies

In a demonstration of why he was able to kill so many people and get away with it, the day of his passage will be a solemn one in Congress and newsrooms.
by Spencer Ackerman via Rolling Stone
This publication restricts nonsubscriber access to some or all of its articles.
on November 30, 2023
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