Martin Di Caro

History As It Happens: Reconsidering Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Seventy-six years ago the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on two Japanese cities. Was there another way to end the war?

August 9, 2021

History As It Happens: Why our COVID nightmare continues

Vaccine aversion, political fanaticism, scientific ignorance, and complacency are causing hospitals to be overwhelmed again.

August 4, 2021

History As It Happens: Biden, Cuba and the burden of history

Historic protests in Cuba refocused attention on a relationship that once consumed Cold Warriors on both sides of the ideological spectrum. The Cold War is long over, but little has changed.

August 2, 2021

History As It Happens: Are we reliving the 1850s?

The violent decade before the Civil War can teach us something about the perils of endless political polarization.

July 28, 2021

History As It Happens: Religion and the American Revolution

The revolution's impact on religion is more complicated than we think.

July 26, 2021

History As It Happens: Understanding populism

Populism is a slippery term that eludes easy definition, even in this populist moment in American politics and culture.

July 21, 2021

History As It Happens: Vietnam redux

ANALYSIS/OPINION: History repeats itself in Afghanistan as the hard lessons of Vietnam go unheeded.

July 19, 2021

History As It Happens: Remembering the violence of the American Revolution

ANALYSIS/OPINION: Fourth of July celebrations and our common memory of the Revolutionary War obscure the viciousness, misery and divisions in the fight for independence.

July 14, 2021

History As It Happens: Mao’s shadow as Chinese Communist Party reaches 100-year mark

China's leaders and the nation's youth are picking and choosing from Mao's legacy as they look to the future.

July 12, 2021

History As It Happens: Black activism and the Olympics

The Olympics and political protest have always mixed, because sports are inherently political. The summer games in Tokyo will be no different.

July 7, 2021

History As It Happens: The fall of the American empire

Andrew Bacevich, historian and critic of U.S. militarism, says it is time to rethink national security and the costs of empire.

July 5, 2021

History As It Happens: Bibi and ‘the bomb’

In 1992 Benjamin Netanyahu, then Israel's deputy prime minister, first warned the world that Iran was "three to five years" away from developing a nuclear bomb. Three decades later, Bibi's legacy on Iran lives on.

June 30, 2021

History As It Happens: In search of truth, from Pearl Harbor to Watergate, from 9/11 to 1/6

Bipartisan commissions and select committees have played an important role in establishing the facts after traumatic events and political scandals. Why do Republicans oppose a 1/6 commission?

June 28, 2021

History As It Happens: The liberal roots of the Republican Party

If today's Republican Party is known for fighting the left in the Congress, courts and culture, the Republican Party of the 1850s rose to prominence by building on "the foundational left-wing social movement of the modern era."

June 23, 2021

History As It Happens: Remembering ‘Operation Barbarossa’

The largest invasion ever began 80 years ago today, and its outcome shaped the modern world.

June 21, 2021

History As It Happens: Biden, Putin and the wreckage of U.S.-Russia relations

Thirty years of missteps and miscalculations, to say nothing of nefarious meddling, will take time to resolve, but recent history shows us that summits can lay the groundwork for progress.

June 16, 2021

History As It Happens: D-Day: history and memory

The liberation of France was more complicated than popular memory acknowledges.

June 14, 2021

History As It Happens: Third party folly

More than 100 prominent Republicans are threatening to form a third party to rescue the GOP from Donald Trump.

June 9, 2021

History As It Happens: Why Tulsa was forgotten

In the past week Americans marked the anniversaries of two major events that hold different places in the common memory. One evoked feelings of honor and pride, the other shame and revulsion.

June 7, 2021