Site News & Featured Content (RSS FEED)

(May 5) (review) Pay For Play: A History of Big-Time College Athletic Reform
May book review: http://bit.ly/lVmTWR

(Apr 15) (review) A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s
April book review: http://bit.ly/hmiIep

(Apr 15) (article) Frenemies: Iran and America since 1900
Our May Origins article is live: http://bit.ly/gaQ5Jz

(Mar 21) (article) American Populism and the Persistence of the Paranoid Style
Our April Origins article is up! http://bit.ly/fP7z44

(Mar 11) The beta of our Origins Reader app is live!
We've launched the beta version of our Android app for Origins.

(Mar 2) (review) The Gold Standard at the Turn of the Twentieth Century: Rising Powers, Global Money, and the Age of Empire
Check out our March book review http://bit.ly/ffitnK

(Feb 15) (article) Currency Wars, Or Why You Should Care About the Global Struggle Over the Value of Money
Our March issue of Origins is live! http://bit.ly/fnVH0Q by Steven Bryan

Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective (RSS FEED)

(February 2012) Re-Mapping American Politics: The Redistricting Revolution Fifty Years Later (David Stebenne)
Alongside the Presidential nomination process, the most prominent American political news stories these days are about the heated, high-stakes struggles over redistricting. The modern era of reapportioning state and federal legislative districts began almost exactly a half century ago when the U.S. Supreme Court decided Baker v. Carr (1962). With the Supreme Court recently agreeing to hear a Congressional redistricting case from Texas, this month historian and legal scholar David Stebenne puts today's redistricting battles in historical perspective to understand better this decisive component of American politics.

(January 2012) Conserving Diversity at the Dinner Table: Plants, Food Security and Gene Banks (Nurcan Atalan-Helicke)
With the ongoing East African drought crisis, the persisting threat of global climate change, and the world population now estimated at 7 billion, global concerns about food insecurity are again in the news. Little mentioned, however, is the continuing loss of genetic diversity of the foods we eat today—a trend that has rapidly accelerated since the twentieth century and that raises troubling questions about the vulnerability of the world’s food supply. One attempt to maintain plant biodiversity has been the establishment of genebanks—giant vaults to store seeds collected from around the globe. But there are serious questions over whether the collection of seeds from ancient Mesopotamian wheat, South American potatoes, or tropical plants in an isolated arctic catacomb can undo a recent history of agriculture that has emphasized bigger yields through modern, standardized varieties of crops.

(December 2011) Down and Out (Again): America's Long Struggle with Mass Unemployment (Daniel Amsterdam)
1857, the 1870s, the 1890s, 1907, 1914, 1919, 1921: The United States faced widespread joblessness in all of these years, well before the Great Depression, not to mention today's Great Recession. As legislators in Washington prepare to debate another round of stimulus spending, and as unemployment reaches record highs, historian Daniel Amsterdam looks back at how the United States has tackled major spikes in unemployment throughout its history and how American efforts have compared with those of other countries.

(November 2011) Energy Policy and the Long Transition in America (William R. Childs)
Energy has been in the news lately: The natural gas industry appears to be developing a world market; the U.S. Army is experimenting with “alternative” and “renewable” energy sources; “green” and “conservation” are being marketed as sound corporate management strategies. A half century ago the emphasis on natural gas, alternative and renewable fuels, and conservation were not in the energy policy mix in the United States. The convergence of historical trends in the 1970s, however, ushered in a “long transition” in American energy policy-making that is on-going. This month historian William R. Childs untangles a few of the many complex strands that make up the history of energy policy in America.

(October 2011) Avoiding the Scourge of War: The Challenges of United Nations Peacekeeping (Donald A. Hempson, III )
Faced with humanitarian crises, outbreaks of civil war, and working in some of the world's most unstable places, United Nations peacekeeping missions are taxed to their limit. This month, historian Donald Hempson traces the evolution of United Nations peacekeeping over more than six decades to highlight the challenges associated with an ever more robust approach to international peacekeeping and conflict resolution. The limitations of the current model force supporters of UN peacekeeping operations to confront the hard questions of whether or not the United Nations is equipped for missions that now entail more peace implementation and enforcement than peacekeeping, especially in an environment of evermore diminishing resources and international will for prolonged and complex peacekeeping initiatives.

(September 2011) The Shifting Terrain of Latin American Drugs Trafficking (Steven Hyland, Jr. )
Forty years after President Richard Nixon declared a 'war on drugs,' the countries of Central and South America remain a central battleground. Though the horrific drug violence in Mexico has captured our attention recently, the history of the trade in the region stretches back much farther. This month, historian Steven Hyland explores how illicit drugs have been one of Latin America's principal contributions to our globalized world, and how narco-trafficking has adapted to market shifts in taste and demand and global and local politics over the last century.

(August 2011) Outdoing Panama: Turkey’s 'Crazy' Plan to Build an Istanbul Canal (James C. Helicke)
Turkey’s Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, recently unveiled a plan so ambitious that even he calls it the 'Crazy Project.' The project aims to build a massive canal that will bypass the Bosporus waterway that bisects Istanbul—a rival to the Panama and Suez Canals in time for the Turkish Republic’s centennial celebrations in 2023. The new canal, Erdogan hopes, will overcome centuries of international intrigue over the Bosporus, facilitate trade, and reduce the possibility of shipping accidents through the heart of Istanbul. This month Origins Managing Editor James Helicke examines the international history surrounding the strategic waterway that has confounded sultans and statesmen. He asks if the 'Crazy Project' will solve the Bosporus dilemma once and for all, or if it is just plain folly.

Origins Podcasts (RSS FEED)

(February 2012: David Stebenne)
Re-Mapping American Politics: The Redistricting Revolution Fifty Years Later

(January 2012: Nurcan Atalan-Helicke)
Conserving Diversity at the Dinner Table: Plants, Food Security and Gene Banks

(December 2011: Daniel Amsterdam)
Down and Out (Again): America's Long Struggle with Mass Unemployment

(November 2011: William R. Childs)
Energy Policy and the Long Transition in America

(October 2011: Donald A. Hempson, III )
Avoiding the Scourge of War: The Challenges of United Nations Peacekeeping

(September 2011: Steven Hyland, Jr. )
The Shifting Terrain of Latin American Drugs Trafficking

(August 2011: James C. Helicke)
Outdoing Panama: Turkey’s 'Crazy' Plan to Build an Istanbul Canal

(July 2011: Ryan Irwin)
WikiLeaks, and the Past and Present of American Foreign Relations

(June 2011: Craig D. Nelson)
'The Energy of a Bright Tomorrow': The Rise of Nuclear Power in Japan

(May 2011: Douglas Little )
Frenemies: Iran and America since 1900

(April 2011: Marc Horger)
American Populism and the Persistence of the Paranoid Style

(March 2011: Steven Bryan)
Currency Wars, Or Why You Should Care About the Global Struggle Over the Value of Money

(February 2011: Leslie Alexander)
A Pact with the Devil? The United States and the Fate of Modern Haiti

(January 2011: David Steigerwald)
Where Have You Gone, Holden Caulfield? Why We Aren't 'Alienated' Anymore

(December 2010: Sarah Brooks)
South America's 'Sleeping Giant' Wakes: Brazil's 2010 Election

(November 2010: Michael J. Wishnie)
The Summer of '10: Federal Power, Local Autonomy, and the Struggle over Immigration Policy

(October 2010: M.M. Silver)
From Gaza to Jerusalem: Is the Two State Solution under Siege?

(September 2010: Lawrence Bowdish)
The Kids Aren't Alright: The Policymaking of Student Loan Debt

(August 2010: Brandy S. Thomas)
The Other Half of the African Sky: Women's Struggles in Zimbabwe

(July 2010: Russell Field)
The Soccer World Goes to South Africa: Sport and the Making of Modern Africa

(June 2010: John Spencer)
Updating 'No Child Left Behind': Change, or More of the Same?

(May 2010: Anne Sealey)
Influenza Pandemics Now, Then, and Again

(April 2010: Nicholas Breyfogle)
Dry Days Down Under: Australia and the World Water Crisis

(March 2010: Chris Otter)
Feast and Famine: The Global Food Crisis

(February 2010: Steven Conn)
Charles Darwin's American Adventure: A Melodrama in Three Acts

(January 2010: Paula Fass)
Child Kidnapping in America

(December 2009: Theodora Dragostinova)
1989 Twenty Years On: The End of Communism and the Fate of Eastern Europe

(November 2009: Mytheli Sreenivas)
Population Bomb? The Debate over Indian Population

(October 2009: Peter R. Mansoor)
From Baghdad to Kabul: The Historical Roots of U.S. Counterinsurgency Doctrine

(September 2009: Scott Levi)
The Long, Long Struggle for Women's Rights in Afghanistan

(August 2009: Donald A. Hempson)
Becoming 'European': The Diverging Paths of the Czech and Slovak Republics

(July 2009: Sebastien Peyrouse)
Building a New Silk Road? Central Asia in the New World Order

(June 2009: Andrew J. Carlson)
Pirates of Puntland, Somalia

(May 2009: Kevin Boyle)
Requiem: Detroit and the Fate of Urban America

(April 2009: Stephanie Coontz)
The Real Marriage Revolution

(February 2009: Ahmad A. Sikainga)
'The World's Worst Humanitarian Crisis': Understanding the Darfur Conflict

(March 2009: Edin Hajdarpasic and Emil Kerenji)
Kosovo's Year Zero: Between a Balkan Past and a European Future

(January 2009: Patricia Weitsman )
With a Little Help from Our Friends?: The Costs of Coalition Warfare

(December 2008: Mitchell Lerner)
Making Sense of the 'Hermit Kingdom': North Korea in the Nuclear Age

(November 2008: Stephen F. Jones )
Clash in the Caucasus: Georgia, Russia, and the Fate of South Ossetia

(October 2008: Bruce Kuklick )
Punishing the Past: Presidential Elections in Times of Crisis (1932, 1968, 2008)

(September 2008: Mansel Blackford)
A Tale of Two Fisheries: Fishing and Over-Fishing in American Waters

(August 2008: Alfred Senn)
Playing Politics: Olympic Controversies Past and Present

(July 2008: David Watt)
What's in a Name?: The Meaning of 'Muslim Fundamentalist'

(June 2008: Christopher A. Reed)
Taiwan's 2008 Elections: A New Direction for the 'Other China'?

(May 2008: Lawrence Bowdish)
(Fore)Closing on the American Dream

(April 2008: Claire Robertson)
Beyond 'Tribes': Violence and Politics in Kenya

(March 2008: Marlene Laruelle)
After Putin? Russia's Presidential Elections

(February 2008: Saul Cornell)
The Second Amendment Goes to Court

(January 2008: Peter Conn)
The Politics of International Adoption

(December 2007: John Guilmartin)
Conflict Termination: How to End -- and Not to End -- Insurgencies

(November 2007: Stephen Dale)
Tradition vs Charisma: The Sunni-Shi'i Divide in the Muslim World

(October 2007: Justin Lance)
Populism and Anti-Americanism in Modern Latin America

Book Reviews (RSS FEED)

(February 2012) Philanthropy in America: A History
Olivier Zunz ((Princeton University Press, 2012))

(January 2012) Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China
Ezra F. Vogel ((Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011), 876 pages.)

(December 2011) Chivalry in Medieval England
Nigel Saul (Harvard University Press, 416 pp, 2011, ISBN 978-0-674-06368-6)

(November 2011) With Our Backs to the Wall: Victory and Defeat in 1918
David Stevenson (David Stevenson, With Our Backs to the Wall: Victory and Defeat in 1918 (Cambridge, M.A.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011).)

(October 2011) Zoot Suit: The Enigmatic Career of an Extreme Style
Kathy Peiss (Peiss, Kathy. Zoot Suit: The Enigmatic Career of an Extreme Style. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011.)

(September 2011) Ataturk: An Intellectual Biography
M. Sukru Hanioglu (Ataturk: An Intellectual Biography by M. Sukru Hanioglu (Princeton. Princeton University Press. 2011))

(August 2011) Measure of the Earth: The Enlightenment expedition that reshaped our world
Larrie D. Ferreiro (Larrie D. Ferreiro. Measure of the Earth: The Enlightenment expedition that reshaped our world. New York: Basic Books, 2011.)

(July 2011) The End of the West: The Once and Future Europe
Marquand, David (Marquand, David. The End of the West: The Once and Future Europe. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011.)

(June 2011) Catholic Pirates and Greek Merchants
Molly Greene ((Princeton University Press 2010))

(May 2011) Pay For Play: A History of Big-Time College Athletic Reform
Ronald A. Smith ((Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011. xii + 344 pp.))