Eric Foner | The New York Review of Books

A ‘Wary Faith’ in the Courts

A groundbreaking new book demonstrates that even during the days of slavery, African Americans knew a lot more about legal principles than has been imagined.

Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights

by Dylan C. Penningroth

April 4, 2024 issue

Seeing Was Not Believing

A new book identifies the 1968 Democratic convention as the moment when broad public regard for the news media gave way to widespread distrust, and American divisiveness took off.

When the News Broke: Chicago 1968 and the Polarizing of America

by Heather Hendershot

September 21, 2023 issue

A Regional Reign of Terror

Most Americans now grasp that violence was essential to the functioning of slavery, but a new book excavates the lesser known brutality of everyday Black life in the Jim Crow South.

By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow’s Legal Executioners

by Margaret A. Burnham

April 6, 2023 issue

Light Under a Bushel

“We can’t accept the principle that the way to judge a course of study is by how much money you will make. It’s important to study history if you want to be an intelligent citizen in a democracy.”

September 17, 2022

The Complicity of the Textbooks

In Teaching White Supremacy, Donald Yacovone traces how the writing of American history, from Reconstruction on, has falsified and illuminated our racial past.

Teaching White Supremacy: America’s Democratic Ordeal and the Forging of Our National Identity

by Donald Yacovone

September 22, 2022 issue

Street Fighting Woman

‘Goddess of Anarchy: The Life and Times of Lucy Parsons, American Radical’ by Jacqueline Jones

Goddess of Anarchy: The Life and Times of Lucy Parsons, American Radical

by Jacqueline Jones

December 21, 2017 issue

Hope for Labor

February 1, 1996 issue

The Hidden History of Emancipation

Trial by Fire: A People's History of the Civil War and Reconstruction

by Page Smith

Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861–1867 Series II: The Black Military Experience

edited by Ira Berlin, with Joseph P. Reidy and Leslie S. Rowland

March 1, 1984 issue

Corrupt Sports: An Exchange

September 29, 1977 issue

Get a Lawyer!

The Transformation of American Law, 1780-1860

by Morton J. Horwitz

April 14, 1977 issue

Good Mixer

October 16, 1975 issue

Founding Father Tom

Paine

by David Hawke

Thomas Paine: His Life, Work, and Times

by Audrey Williamson

May 15, 1975 issue

Letter

Audrey Williamson

Good Mixer

October 16, 1975 issue

Battle Over the Revolution

From Resistance to Revolution: Colonial Radicals and the Development of American Opposition to Britain, 1765-1776

by Pauline Maier

Revolutionary Politics in Massachusetts: The Boston Committee of Correspondence and the Towns, 1772-1774

by Richard D. Brown

The British-Americans: The Loyalist Exiles in England, 1774-1789

by Mary Beth Norton

Securing the Revolution: Ideology in American Politics, 1789-1815

by Richard Buel Jr.

February 22, 1973 issue

Letter

Joseph Lane

Come to the Fair

April 5, 1973 issue

Is This History Necessary?

The Coming of the Civil War

by Robert Goldston

Reconstruction: The Great Experiment

by Allen W. Trelease

The Making of an Afro-American: Martin Robison Delany, 1812-1885

by Dorothy Sterling

Great Gettin' Up Morning: A Biography of Denmark Vesey

by John Oliver Killens

Challenge to Become a Doctor: The Story of Elizabeth Blackwell

by Leah Lurie Heyn

Steal Away: Stories of the Runaway Slaves

edited by Abraham Chapman

To Be a Slave

by Julius Lester

Long Journey Home: Stories from Black History

by Julius Lester

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April 20, 1972 issue

Black Conspiracies

Denmark Vesey: The Slave Conspiracy of 1822

edited by Robert S. Starobin

The Southampton Slave Revolt of 1831: A Compilation of Source Materials

by Henry Irving Tragle

November 4, 1971 issue

Slave Masters, Women & Northern Nationalists

Crisis of Fear: Secession in South Carolina

by Stephen A. Channing

The Southern Lady: From Pedestal to Politics, 1830-1930

by Anne Firor Scott

The Meaning of Henry Ward Beecher: An Essay on the Shifting Values of Mid-Victorian America, 1840-1870

by William G. McLoughlin

February 25, 1971 issue

Exchange on Black Nationalism

December 3, 1970 issue

In Search of Black History

The Rediscovery of Black Nationalism

by Theodore Draper

October 22, 1970 issue

Exchange

Theodore H. Draper

Exchange on Black Nationalism

December 3, 1970 issue