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History and Current Events October 2026 |
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Centennial: The Great Fair of 1876 and the Invention of America's Future
by Fergus M. Bordewich
The spectacular story of America's hundredth birthday bash--the country's first world's fair and a moment of reckoning for a nation barrelling toward the Gilded Age Those who were there felt that the wheel of history itself had turned before their eyes. Held at Fairmount Park, in Philadelphia, the Great Centennial Exhibition of 1876 attracted 10 million Americans--nearly 20 percent of the population, among them P. T. Barnum, Frederick Douglass, and Mark Twain--and visitors from around the world, including the emperor of Brazil, Dom Pedro (who couldn't get enough of the exhibition). On display were inventions that signaled the changing landscape of American life, from the typewriter to the telephone to Heinz Tomato Ketchup. This celebration of America's first century came at a moment when its future seemed more precarious than ever--as big money threatened to overwhelm the government, underpaid workers waged the first national labor strike, feminists demanded rights for women, Native tribes went to war to repel the advancing settlement in the West, and Black Americans struggled to exercise their hard-won freedom. Looming over the fair was the presidential race of 1876--a highly contested election that would determine the fate of Reconstruction and permanently shape the Republican party as we know it today. Fergus Bordewich animates these converging crises through the lives of four protagonists--Rutherford B. Hayes, Alexander Graham Bell, railroad magnate Tom Scott, and sculptor Edmonia Lewis--revealing a country striving to live up to the promise of its founders while bracing for the tidal wave of the twentieth century.
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| The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State by Jill LeporeTaking inspiration from Hannah Arendt’s 1951 classic The Origins of Totalitarianism, Pulitzer Prize winner Jill Lepore’s thought-provoking latest examines the origins and evolution of artificial intelligence, detailing AI’s damaging influence over politics, economics, and the everyday fabric of life. Try this next: Reboot: AI and the Race to Save Democracy by Beth Simone Noveck. |
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Putin's Sledgehammer: The Wagner Group and Russia's Collapse Into Mercenary Chaos
by Candace Rondeaux
In July 2023 the Wagner Group assembled an armed convoy that included tanks and rocket launchers and set out on what seemed like a journey to take control of Moscow. The last person to attempt such a venture was Adolf Hitler. Wagner's power began from patronage, then grew from international theft and extortion, until it was so great it exposed the weakness of Russia's conventional military and became a threat to the Russian state, one that was not demonstrably eliminated until a private jet containing Wagner's core commanders was blown up in midair. That Yevgeny Prigozhin, a local criminal thug, was able to build a private army that was on the threshold of overwhelming the world's second largest country seems incredible. In fact, it was inevitable following the hollowing out of the Russian military, the creeping use of contract groups for murky foreign missions, power struggles inside the Kremlin, and the ability of the new militias to corner and exploit the black economy. Told with unique inside sourcing and expertise, Putin's Sledgehammer is a gripping and terrifying account of a superpower that contracted its soul to a pitiless militia--
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Japan's Infamous Unit 731: First-Hand Accounts of Japan's Wartime Human Experimentation Program
by Hal Gold
This is a riveting and disturbing account of the medical atrocities performed in China during WWII. Some of the cruelest deeds of Japan's war in Asia did not occur on the battlefield, but in quiet, antiseptic medical wards in obscure parts of China. Far from front lines and prying eyes, Japanese doctors and their assistants subjected human guinea pigs to gruesome medical experiments in the name of science and Japan's wartime chemical and biological warfare research. Author Hal Gold draws upon a wealth of sources to construct a portrait of the Imperial Japanese Army's most notorious medical unit, giving an overview of its history and detailing its most shocking activities. The book presents the words of former unit members themselves, taken from remarks they made at a traveling Unit 731 exhibition held in Japan in 1994-95. They recount vivid first-hand memories of what it was like to take part in horrific experiments on men, women and children, their motivations and reasons why they chose to speak about their actions all these years later. A new foreword by historian Yuma Totani examines the actions of Unit 731, the post-war response by the Allies and the lasting importance of the book. Japan's Infamous Unit 731 represents an essential addition to the growing body of literature on the still unfolding story of some of the most infamous war crimes in modem military history. By showing how the ethics of normal men and women, and even an entire profession, can be warped by the fire of war, this important book offers a window on a time of human madness and the hope that history will not be repeated.
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| A Moment in the Sun: Black Manhattan Before the Civil War by Shane WhiteScholar Shane White’s well-researched revisionist history offers a lively look at Black social and cultural life in antebellum New York City, utilizing archival materials and firsthand accounts to detail how Black New Yorkers thrived in the face of massive societal upheaval. Further reading: Brooklynites: Free Black Communities in the Nineteenth Century by Prithi Kanakamedala. |
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| Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea: Journeys Through Ancient Literature by Emily WilsonIn this engaging and accessible essay collection, classical studies professor Emily Wilson, whose work includes revered translations of Homer’s The Odyssey (which served as the inspiration for Christopher Nolan’s recent film adaptation) and The Iliad, discusses the complex history and challenges of translating ancient literature. Try this next: Talking Classics: The Shock of the Old by Mary Beard. |
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An Inconvenient Woman: The Extraordinary Life of Lillian Smith, the Southerner Who Defied Jim Crow America
by Keri Leigh Merritt
A revelatory and immersive biography of a white Southern woman who was a key figure in the early civil rights movement, devoting her life to ending segregation in America only to be forgotten by history.Born in Florida to a religious family, Lillian Smith (1897-1966) was a white Southern woman living in the Jim Crow South who defied all stereotypes: She lived with her lover, Paula, first running a summer camp in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains, and then a magazine, devoted to creating a new vision of the South, one that passionately championed equality and integration. Smith published Black and white writers, a rare feat in those days, and herself wrote articles instructing white Southerners on why they shouldn't support segregation--Smith firmly believed racism hurt white Americans, too. In 1944 she published a bestselling novel, Strange Fruit, which became a national sensation and was banned in Boston and Detroit. The FBI began a file on her, she received death threats, and her house caught fire three times, twice intentionally, resulting in the loss of all her works-in-progress and her correspondence. Undaunted, she continued her ardent fight against segregation, maintaining correspondence with some of the great leaders of her day, including Eleanor Roosevelt, Martin Luther King Jr, W.E.B Dubois, Paul Robeson, and Pauli Murray. She continued to fight for both civil and human rights throughout the 1960s, helping nurture many of the activists in SNCC and CORE, only to succumb to cancer in 1966. Drawing on previously unpublished archival research, and with a modern appreciation of Smith's complex identity, AN INCONVENIENT WOMAN is the definitive account of a woman who defied all expectations and dedicated her life to racial equality.
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