The past is never dead. It's not even past
College freshmen have no personal knowledge of the Cold War. Born after the Berlin Wall’s fall and the Soviet Union’s collapse, the threat of nuclear Armageddon seems far removed from their experiences, a relic of a bygone age. Yet, today, more countries than ever hold weapons whose scale of destruction can dwarf that of every bomb used in World War II.
Throughout the Cold War and the decade that followed it, historians assumed that Cuban and Soviet leaders cooperated closely in the events associated with the Cuban missile crisis. Havana and Moscow, so went the conventional wisdom, put their lots together in a challenge against U.S.
Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959-1976, takes readers beyond the familiar categories of the Soviet-American Cold War. In the wake of decolonization, as charismatic national leaders emerged across Africa – from Algeria to Zaire – statesmen in Washington and Moscow waited anxiously to see if the new governments would align with democracy or communism.
As the nation celebrated the 2025 Fourth of July, flash flooding swallowed the Texas Hill Country. An entire summer’s worth of rain fell in the area, causing the Guadalupe River to rise dramatically in mere minutes. This disastrous deluge tragically claimed the lives of over 100 people. President Donald Trump declared the flood a major […]
Jeremi and Zachary have a conversation with Dr. Mark Pomar on the historical impact of Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and Radio Liberty’s critical role of radio communications during the Cold War, and the challenges they face today including the recent threats to their operation. Zachary sets the scene with his poem, “Radio Liberty”. […]
Ericka Verba’s book Thanks to Life: A Biography of Violeta Parra is the riveting culmination of a lifetime of dedicated and passionate research about the world-renowned Chilean artist Violeta Parra. Verba immerses readers into the rowdy Chilean peñas, elite Communist gatherings, smoke-filled Parisian nightclubs, and desolate circus tents to narrate decades of Chilean musical history […]
Dr. Jonathan Brown, emeritus professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin, followed an unconventional path to academia. Following a master’s degree in history at the University of Arizona, he received a commission in the Army R.O.T.C. program. Brown served as a lieutenant in the Panama Canal Zone from 1968 to 1970. Later […]
The following narrative is adapted from my recent dissertation on revolutions in Latin America. When I shared it with upper division history students for a class discussion, the story surprised them. Most of them had only ever experienced student government as something to put on your resumé for grad school applications. They had never imagined […]
The therapeutic potentials of substances commonly known as “psychedelics”—drugs like psilocybin, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), and mescaline—have received increasingly favorable coverage in newspapers and TV programs around the world in recent years. Although it was by a relatively small margin, the state of Colorado decriminalized several psychedelic molecules as “natural medicines” through a 2022 ballot […]
During the 1970s, relations between the US and China were transformed. Previously the two nations were cold war enemies. But Kazushi Minami argues that the ’70s saw Americans reimagine China as a country of opportunities, while Chinese reinterpreted the US as an agent of modernization, capable of enriching their country. Crucial to this process was […]