I’m on a text chain with my 3 brothers and all our sons. All of us are liberal arts majors, mostly history. I dare say we Smiths are a bit contrarian. It’s our knowledge of history and learning the ...

The Scottish poet, novelist, and historian Andrew Lang once quipped that politicians use statistics the way a drunkard uses a lamppost: “for support rather than illumination.” Indeed, the same line ...

Answers to the question about the lessons of history generally oscillate between two extremes. One is summed up in the 1905 aphorism of the Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana: “Those who ...

Like the super-majority of Americans, I'm directly related to a family of immigrants. As is true for so many millions of my fellow Americans, what motivated my grandparents to leave their native ...

History, the study of documented events and change over time, is at its foundation the study of people—singularly and collectively, with their shared and conflicting natures, choices, attitudes and ...

We can’t change history, but we can learn from it. As a rule, professional historians are loath to draw explicit lessons from the past. We leave that to popularizers and to figures like Lord Acton or ...

Earlier this month, I compared Joe Biden to John F. Kennedy, who salvaged his image after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 by admitting his mistake — and learning from it. I acknowledged that ...

Eliminate the history department. He sits there all humble and innocent, with unkempt hair, in the farthest reaches of the ivory tower. But hiding within that dusty den of out-of-print books is an ...

S+B: Historians have, well, historically been content to leave current events to journalists. But you spend a lot of time writing, teaching, and thinking about what is happening now. How do you ...

The resurgence of inflation in the United States has roused political concern and stirred the Federal Reserve to pivot from patience to seemingly urgent action. Higher inflation has also led to ...

Re: “ICE officer kills driver in Minneapolis, inciting turmoil” (Jan. 8, A1): As national tensions rise over federal enforcement and local resistance, it’s worth remembering that our country has faced ...