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Randall Stephens The latest issue of HS is now up on the Project Muse site .  It is a longer issue than normal, featuring two forums, five essays, and four interviews.  Readers might be especially interested in our forum on Geoffrey Parker’s Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century (Yale University Press, 2013), one of the most important history books of the last year.  As Don Yerxa puts it in the intro to the forum : "It has been widely heralded as an extraordinary scholarly achievement. Parker makes the case for a link between climate change and the worldwide catastrophe that occurred 350 years ago. We asked Parker to begin our forum with an account on the book’s long gestation. Then three prominent scholars, Kenneth Pomeranz, J.R. McNeill, and Jack Goldstone, comment on Global Crisis, followed by Parker’s rejoinder." This issue, as many of our readers know, also marks an important transition for HS.  We are suspending publicat...

Joe Amato, emeritus professor of history at Southwest Minnesota State University, is a prolific and creative scholar. He has published eye-opening books on unique topics (his most recent is Surfaces: A History ). He is also a veteran practitioner of the kinds of history most avidly pursued by non-academics: genealogy and local history. The January, April, and June issues of the 2013 volume of the Historical Society's bulletin  Historically Speaking   feature a   three-part essay series by Amato, "Place and American History," where he ruminates on these seemingly mundane--though in his hands anything but--historiographical genres. Recently Amato spoke to South Dakota Public Radio's Nathan Puhl about these essays. You can listen to their conversation here .

Randall Stephens In the coming weeks Historically Speaking subscribers will receive the latest issue.  In it we have essays on American political history and reform (John Frederick Martin and F. S. Naiden), objectivity in the study of history (Judith Walzer Leavitt), Atlantic World history (Trevor Burnard), photography and the Great War (Von Hardesty), an obituary of Pauline Maier (Chris Beneke), and Evangelical Catholicism (Mark Edwards).  Alongside those are interviews with scholars concerning American religious history (Larry Eskridge), and the critical years of 1979 (Christian Caryl) and 1913 (Charles Emmerson). The September issue also includes James M. Banner 's fascinating essay "The Almost Nonexistent History of Academic Departments."  Writes Banner: "Department histories are almost nowhere to be found."  Why is that so?  Says Banner: The history of education has never found a strong place in history departments. Those aspiring historians seeking entry ...

Randall Stephens The Response by Sir William Goscombe John. Unveiled by the Prince of Wales in 1923. Ernest Hemingway didn't mince words.  The author of A Farewell to Arms claimed that World War I "was the most colossal, murderous, mismanaged butchery that has ever taken place on earth. Any writer who said otherwise lied . So the writers either wrote propaganda, shut up, or fought."  Seeing the ravages of war up close, he served with distinction as an ambulance driver in Italy .  Gertrude Stein coined the phrase "lost generation," which applied to Hemingway and other wayward souls like T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. What accounts for the gap between Hemingway's tone and the gallant, heroic one of war memorials?  Did region have a role to play in war remembrance?  How do we make sense of the conflict now that the last veterans have passed away ? As we near the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I Don Yerxa has been conducting a s...

Randall Stephens How did Stalin control the media during World War II?  And how did that level of control shape the direction of the war and compare to similar efforts in Germany?   Karel C. Berkhoff explores these and other questions in his June 2013 Historically Speaking essay, "Motherland In Danger: How Stalin Micromanaged The Media During The War With Nazi Germany and Hurt Mobilization Efforts." (See the full piece at Project Muse .) Asks Berkhoff: "If you lived, say, in Novosibirsk or Tashkent during World War II, what were you told? What did Soviet newspapers and radio tell Soviet civilians, and what did it all mean for the outcome of the war?"  Throughout he notes that Stalin's extensive wartime propaganda stood out when compared to contemporaries.  Here's a brief excerpt: A close look reveals that during the war with Nazi Germany, known in Russia as the Great Patriotic War, Soviet propaganda was much more centralized than in Nazi Germany. Joseph...

Randall Stephens The following excerpt is from Michal Jan Rozbicki's review essay in the June 2013 issue of Historically Speaking .  Rozbicki uses Jon Meacham's Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power (Random House, 2012) to delve into "the cult of great individuals," which even in the present, does not lack enthusiasts.  Rozbicki is professor of history and director of the Center for Intercultural Studies at Saint Louis University. He is the author of Culture and Liberty in the Age of the American Revolution (University of Virginia Press, 2011). One would be hard pressed to find a dull period in Thomas Jefferson’s life. Mindful of that, I began devouring Jon Meacham’s 800-page Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power anticipating a gourmet biographical feast. It started off as an enjoyable and well-paced story but it was not long before the taste of syrup began to take over. By the time I reached page eight I had already been informed that “Jefferson was the most successful ...

Randall Stephens In the coming week the April 2013 issue of Historically Speaking will be posted to the Project Muse site.  Subscribers can expect it soon in mailboxes.  The issue includes essays on environmental history, ancient religion, teaching, and Harry Truman. It also features interviews with Matthew Bowman on Mormonism in American history, John R. Gillis on seacoasts in history, and turning points of World War I with Ian F.W. Beckett.  In addition the April issue includes a lively forum on "Scientific Culture in the Modern Era" with intellectual historian Stephen Gaukroger (University of Sydney).  "One of the most distinctive features of Western culture since the 17th century is the gradual assimilation of all cognitive values to scientific ones," writes Gaukroger in his lead essay. "A particular image of the role and aims of scientific understanding is tied up in a very fundamental way with the self-image of Western modernity. One striking illu...