Site Search

467 items

History Now Essay

Perils of the Ocean in the Early Modern Era

Robert C. Ritchie

Geography, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

A traveler considering an ocean voyage around 1600 had much to contemplate. Voyage by voyage, explorers and colonists alike needed knowledge about the seas and lands in the Atlantic world. Unfortunately, information was never shared...

Appears in:

25 | Three Worlds Meet Fall 2010

History Now Essay

Women of the West

Virginia Scharff

Geography, Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Women are like water to Western history. Both have flowed through the terrain we have come to call the West, long before the inhabitants conceived of themselves as part of an expanding United States. Both have been represented as...

Appears in:

9 | The American West Fall 2006

History Now Essay

FDR and Hitler: A Study in Contrasts

David M. Kennedy

Government and Civics, World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

The Great Depression and World War II were events in world history, but they touched different countries in sometimes dramatically different ways. To paraphrase Tolstoy, many peoples suffered, but every unhappy people was unhappy in...

Appears in:

14 | World War II Winter 2007

History Now Essay

The Marshall and Taney Courts: Continuities and Changes

R. B. Bernstein

Economics, Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Though the first holders of the job thought it more a burden than a position of honor or power, the office of chief justice of the United States has a pivotal role in the American constitutional system, thanks mainly to John Marshall ...

Appears in:

15 | The Supreme Court Spring 2008

History Now Essay

Indian Removal

Theda Perdue

Geography, Government and Civics

In 1828 pressure was building among white Americans for the relocation of American Indians from the eastern United States to lands west of the Mississippi River. A student at a mission school in the Cherokee Nation, which lay within...

Appears in:

28 | American Indians Summer 2011

History Now Essay

Andrew Jackson’s Shifting Legacy

Daniel Feller

Economics, Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Of all presidential reputations, Andrew Jackson’s is perhaps the most difficult to summarize or explain. Most Americans recognize his name, though most probably know him (in the words of a famous song) as the general who "fought the...

Appears in:

22 | Andrew Jackson and His World Winter 2009

History Now Essay

The Civil Rights Movement: Major Events and Legacies

James T. Patterson

Art, Government and Civics, Literature

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

From the earliest years of European settlement in North America, whites enslaved and oppressed black people. Although the Civil War finally brought about the abolition of slavery, a harsh system of white supremacy persisted thereafter...

Appears in:

8 | The Civil Rights Movement Summer 2006

History Now Essay

The World War II Home Front

Allan M. Winkler

Economics, Government and Civics, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

World War II had a profound impact on the United States. Although no battles occurred on the American mainland, the war affected all phases of American life. It required unprecedented efforts to coordinate strategy and tactics with...

Appears in:

14 | World War II Winter 2007

History Now Essay

Ordinary Americans and the Constitution

Gary B. Nash

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

The Constitution is so honored today, at home and abroad, that it may seem irreverent to suggest that for a great many ordinary Americans, it was not what they wished as a capstone of their revolutionary experience. This is not to say...

Appears in:

13 | The Constitution Fall 2007

History Now Essay

Women and Wagoners: Camp Followers in the American War for Independence

Holly A. Mayer

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

An old tune called "The Girl I Left Behind Me" tells of a lovelorn soldier yearning to return home to his waiting fair maid. Although there is a good chance that this song was fifed during the Revolutionary War, the earliest...

Appears in:

21 | The American Revolution Fall 2009

History Now Essay

England on the Eve of Colonization

Paul E. J. Hammer

World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

When James VI of Scotland and his entourage began his journey south to take up the crown of England in April of 1603, it looked as if the ancient enmity between the two realms had finally been swept away. With England’s aristocratic...

Appears in:

25 | Three Worlds Meet Fall 2010

History Now Essay

The Jungle and the Progressive Era

Robert W. Cherny

Economics, Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

The publication of Upton Sinclair’s 1906 novel The Jungle produced an immediate and powerful effect on Americans and on federal policy, but Sinclair had hoped to achieve a very different result. At the time he began working on the...

Appears in:

16 | Books That Changed History Summer 2008

History Now Essay

John Brown: Villain or Hero?

Steven Mintz

Economics, Literature, Religion and Philosophy

9, 10, 11, 12

In 1856, three years before his celebrated raid on Harpers Ferry, John Brown, with four of his sons and three others, dragged five unarmed men and boys from their homes along Kansas’s Pottawatomie Creek and hacked and dismembered...

Appears in:

5 | Abolition Fall 2005

History Now Essay

The US Banking System: Origin, Development, and Regulation

Richard Sylla

Economics, Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Banks are among the oldest businesses in American history—the Bank of New York, for example, was founded in 1784, and as the recently renamed Bank of New York Mellon it had its 225th anniversary in 2009. The banking system is one of...

Appears in:

24 | Shaping the American Economy Summer 2010

History Now Essay

Cahokia: A Pre-Columbian American City

Timothy R. Pauketat

Almost a thousand years ago, American Indians built a city along the Mississippi River in the middle of North America. Located opposite modern-day St. Louis, Missouri, this city is called Cahokia by archaeologists, and it was as large...

Appears in:

28 | American Indians Summer 2011

History Now Essay

Amateurism and Jim Thorpe at the Fifth Olympiad

Kate Buford

7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Thorpe’s deception and subsequent confession deals amateur sport in America the hardest blow it has ever had to take and disarranges the scheme of amateur athletics the world over. New York Times , January 28, 1913 The early years of...

Appears in:

23 | Turning Points in American Sports Spring 2010

History Now Essay

The Battle of the Sexes

Gail Collins

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

It’s hard to explain, if you weren’t there at the time, why the "Battle of the Sexes"—the 1973 tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs—was so important. The most enduring image from the event was the picture of Billie...

Appears in:

23 | Turning Points in American Sports Spring 2010

History Now Essay

New Orleans and the History of Jazz

Loren Schoenberg

Art, Geography

5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

New Orleans is a city built in a location that was by any measure a mistake. North American settlers needed a way to import and export goods via the Mississippi River, so a city was created atop swamps. By virtue of its location and...

Appears in:

11 | American Cities Spring 2007

History Now Essay

Women and the Great Depression

Susan Ware

Economics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

In 1933 Eleanor Roosevelt’s It’s Up to the Women exhorted American women to help pull the country through its current economic crisis, the gravest it had ever faced: "The women know that life must go on and that the needs of life must...

Appears in:

19 | The Great Depression Spring 2009

History Now Essay

Economic Policy through the Lens of History

Roger E. A. Farmer

Economics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be...

Appears in:

24 | Shaping the American Economy Summer 2010

History Now Essay

The Indians’ War of Independence

Colin G. Calloway

Geography, Government and Civics, World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson clearly described the role of American Indians in the American Revolution. In addition to his other oppressive acts, King George III had "endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of...

Appears in:

21 | The American Revolution Fall 2009

History Now Essay

James Madison and the Constitution

Jack Rakove

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

James Madison had just turned twenty-five when he took up his first public office as a delegate to the Virginia provincial convention that endorsed American independence and then adopted a new constitution and an accompanying...

Appears in:

13 | The Constitution Fall 2007

History Now Essay

The Square Deal: Theodore Roosevelt and the Themes of Progressive Reform

Kirsten Swinth

Economics, Government and Civics, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Progressivism arrived at a moment of crisis for the United States. As the nineteenth century came to a close, just decades after the Civil War, many feared the nation faced another explosive and violent conflict, this time between the...

Appears in:

17 | Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Era Fall 2008

History Now Essay

Early America’s Jewish Settlers

Eli Faber

Religion and Philosophy

If you had the opportunity to create a new society from scratch, to build its institutions and establish its social structure from the ground up, how would you go about doing it? This is one of the most fruitful ways for teachers and...

Appears in:

29 | Religion in the Colonial World Fall 2011

History Now Essay

Natural Rights, Citizenship Rights, State Rights, and Black Rights: Another Look at Lincoln and Race

James Oakes

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Stephen Douglas was the first in a long line of observers frustrated by the inconsistent things Abraham Lincoln had to say about racial equality. In their fifth debate, at Galesburg, Illinois, on October 7, 1858, Douglas complained...

Appears in:

18 | Abraham Lincoln in His Time and Ours Winter 2008

Site Search

Stay up to date, and subscribe to our quarterly newsletter.