Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
By Caitlin Tyler-Richards
In celebration of Veterans Day, we’re pleased to share a conversation between OHR managing editor Troy Reeves and Dr. Robert P. Wettemann Jr., director of the U.S. Air Force Academy Center for Oral History.
By Sarah Thomson
In 2012, 45 US states, as well as the District of Columbia, adopted and began implementing the new Common Core State Standards in K-12 public schools. In history and social studies classes, the Common Core Standards emphasize critical thinking and analytical reading and writing skills.
By Richard Moe
Barack Obama earlier this year became the first president in recent memory to propose limiting the powers of his office when he called for reigning in the use of drones. “Unless we discipline our thinking, our definitions, our actions,” he said on 23 May 2013.
Today marks the 217th anniversary of the start of the third election of the president of the United States on 4 November 1796. Still a young country, the election was center stage that year as George Washington decided to stop running. Many patriots were viable candidates, but John Adams had served as vice president under Washington and was an obvious choice for a candidate.
By Martha J. Cutter
My nephew Jake Silverman is a brainy, confident, energetic, and strong-willed six-year-old. He eats more food than I ever thought it was possible for a six-year-old boy to consume, loves my iPad with a passion, and sometimes has temper tantrums when he doesn’t get precisely what he wants. He already knows he wants to be a doctor, and I have no doubt that he will be an unruly teenager who will mature into a brilliant, handsome, and talented young man. At least that is my hope.
There are a number of mysteries surrounding the Battle of Midway, and a breadth of new information has recently been uncovered about the four day struggle. We sat down with naval historian Craig L. Symonds, author of The Battle of Midway, newly released in paperback, to answer some questions about the iconic World War II […]
By Patrick Coffey
Even before the Manhattan Project began, Edward Teller found the idea of building the Super (a hydrogen bomb) irresistible. After the Project’s end, Teller prepared a fifty-nine-page report, “A Prima Facie Proof of the Feasibility of the Super,” which he presented at an April 1946 conference at Los Alamos.
By Owen Davies
Why is Halloween associated with witches? Look back beyond the twentieth century and you will find few connections. The 31st of October has long been a day of great religious significance of course. It is All Hallows’ Eve, the build-up to the Catholic All Saints’ Day, and then All Souls’ Day on 2 November. This was a time when the worlds of the living and the dead were at their closest.
By Joseph B. Raskin
Service on the first route of the New York City subway system began 109 years ago today, on 27 October 1904. The occasion was marked by ceremonies in City Hall, led by George A. McClellan and representatives of the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT), the operators of that line. Mayor McClellan saw the opening of the subway as the beginning of a new era for the greater city.
By David Brian Robertson
In the The Federalist, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay offer us urgent lessons for coping with the kind of gridlock that grips American government today. They were defending a plan intended to replace a failing national government. The proposed Constitution aimed to break a government stalemate that threatened the survival of the infant American republic.
By Robert Heinrich
Why think of American history in terms of biography? Perhaps most obviously, looking at individuals’ lives allows us to see behind the curtain of many of the great events and movements in American history.
By Jean Baker
Organizing for the women’s suffrage parade planned for 23 October 1915 in New York had taken months. By this time leaders of the New York movement were practiced at arranging such popular spectacles in a state that would be a significant prize, with parades its most effective, opinion–changing tactic. Finally–nearly seventy years after the Seneca Falls Convention and its call for women’s suffrage– the momentum seemed to be shifting.
By Mitch Kachun
Like many scholars who study nineteenth century African American history and literature, I am excited by the attention surrounding the newly released film, 12 Years a Slave, based on the experiences of Solomon Northup, a free black man from New York who was kidnapped in 1841 and sold into slavery.
By Elizabeth R. Varon
This year’s Civil War sesquicentennial commemorations have highlighted the theme of emancipation, and appropriately so: Lincoln’s promulgation of his Emancipation Proclamation in January of 1863 was a watershed event. But if we cast our eyes back to African American freedom commemorations in the wake of the war, we are reminded that emancipation was a process, not an event — and that its fulfillment hinged on Confederate military defeat.
In early October of 1877, Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce surrendered to the United States military after a harrowing five month war to reclaim their ancestral homeland from gold rushing Americans. The following excerpt from Elliot West’s The Last Indian War: The Nez Perce Story describes the settlement made and the challenging move north the displaced Nez Perce faced as a result of it.
We’re told many stories about the 1960s, typically clichéd tales of excess and revolution. But there’s more to the popular music of the 1960s. There are many ways in which rock music has shaped our ideas of individual freedom and collective belonging. Rock became a way for participants in American culture and counterculture to think about what it meant to be an American citizen, a world citizen, a citizen-consumer, or a citizen-soldier.