Guaraná: How Brazil Embraced the World’s Most Caffeine-Rich Plant is a luminous social biography of a single Amazonia fruit. Historian Seth Garfield re-invigorates the abiding relevance of the history of commodities as an entry point into Latin American history. As a history of consumption, science, and national mythology, the book invites readers into new terrain in the […]
This Is Democracy: Chinese Protests
This week, Jeremi and Zachary are joined by Dr. Joshua Eisenman to discuss protests and political upheaval in China. Zachary sets the scene with his poem entitled, “A Blank Sheet of Paper” Guest Joshua Eisenman is an associate professor of global affairs at the University of Notre Dame. His research focuses on the political economy […]
Confronting Dictatorship: Jimmy Carter and Human Rights Diplomacy in Argentina
Commentators and scholars have long represented the United States as the supreme guarantor of a well-tempered international order. Today, however, agents of American international relations find themselves confronting uncertainty both at home and abroad. Nevertheless, as they navigate the uncharted waters of contemporary global politics, representatives of the United States and its international interlocutors can […]
Roundtable Review of Jeremi Suri’s Civil War by Other Means
From the editors: Historical scholarship is underpinned by rigorous investigation of sources and archives. But historians can also leverage their knowledge of the past to think critically about the present. Jeremi Suri, the Mack Brown Distinguished Chair for Leadership in Global Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, exemplifies this practice. In October, Dr. […]
Crises as Catalysts: The Case for Optimism in Future US-Russia Arms Control Negotiations
Commentators and scholars have long represented the United States as the supreme guarantor of a well-tempered international order. Today, however, agents of American international relations find themselves confronting uncertainty both at home and abroad. Nevertheless, as they navigate the uncharted waters of contemporary global politics, representatives of the United States and its international interlocutors can […]
Review of Our America: A Hispanic History of the United States, by Felipe Fernández-Armesto (2014)
From the editors: One of the joys of working on Not Even Past is our huge library of amazing content. Below we’ve updated and republished Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra’s brilliant and moving review of Felipe Fernández-Armesto’s magisterial Our America: A Hispanic History of the United States. I first came across Felipe Fernández-Armesto many more years ago than […]
Putin’s Effort to Make Conquest Acceptable Again
By Jeremi Suri September 30, 2022 marked the abrupt end to a long era of world history. In a dark, threatening, and bombastic speech to his cowering, hand-picked apparatchiks, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that his country was annexing almost one-fifth of Ukrainian territory – the eastern provinces of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson. Russian […]
Introducing “Uncharted Waters,” a New Article Series from Not Even Past and the Clements Center for National Security
Commentators and scholars have long represented the United States as the supreme guarantor of a well-tempered international order. Today, however, the picture looks far murkier. Agents of American international relations find themselves confronting uncertainty both at home and abroad. New and unpredictable threats to national security, public health, and the global environment loom large on […]
Tracking Kurosawa Through Postwar Japan (and How I Turned a Side Hustle Into a Book)
NEP Author Spotlight – Gabrielle Esparza
The success of Not Even Past is made possible by a remarkable group of faculty and graduate student writers. Not Even Past Author Spotlights are designed to celebrate our most prolific authors by bringing together all of their published content across the site together on a single page. The focus is especially on work published by UT […]