James M. Banner Jr.

James M. Banner Jr. reviews Joanne B. Freeman’s book on violence and bloodshed in the antebellum Congress.

Did the Duke of Buckingham conspire to kill King James I?

Let it be said at the outset that James Lewis's The Burr Conspiracy is a superb work of contemporary historical craftsmanship. The question for everyone interested in its subject is how to understand it.

Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. possessed the most sparkling intelligence of his generation of historians. He may not have had the most subtle or profound mind, but his was the most effervescent disposition, and no one could surpass him in sheer energy, knowledge, and skill as scholar and writer.…

To one who spends time in the archives of the first quarter-century of the American republic can avoid references to one Jonathan Robbins. Probably in reality the Irish tar Thomas Nash, the pseudonymous Robbins scarcely ranks up there with other major figures of the period. But then why is his name…

How are we to approach the man? No one has ever gotten him quite right. Benjamin Franklin thought him, in a famous remark, “sometimes, and in some things, absolutely out of his senses." Thomas Jefferson could never fully figure out what to make of such a witty, learned, emotionally open man. In our…

At the core of the origin story of African-American history—in fact, of all people of African descent in the Western hemisphere—is migration.

At the core of the origin story of African-American history—in fact, of all people of African descent in the Western hemisphere—is migration.

One might be inclined to laugh at footnote references on an early page of this deeply scholarly work to the Journal of the Society of Archer Antiquaries and the Henry North History of Dentistry Research Group Publication. But by so quickly dropping readers into such esoteric corners of published…

One might be inclined to laugh at footnote references on an early page of this deeply scholarly work to the Journal of the Society of Archer Antiquaries and the Henry North History of Dentistry Research Group Publication. But by so quickly dropping readers into such esoteric corners of published…

Historians have to make strategic decisions before they even pick up their pens. The most freighted of them is whether to tell a story or advance an argument. The two can be done simultaneously, as Edward Gibbon long ago proved, but it’s hard to pull off. Academic historians have preferred argument…

No one will be surprised by the general theme of this book: the enduring tension between the federal and state governments, between the center and the periphery of the American political system. Not unique to the United States, the distinctiveness of the pull between central and other American…

In a country as disposed to war as the United States has been, the relationship between the commander in chief and his admirals and generals is as critical as that between the president and Congress. Just how critical that relationship may be is the theme of this book, the first full-length history…

These two books—similar in intent, different in execution, roughly simultaneous in publication—tell the story of the lives of members of two nearly contemporary collegiate cohorts. One enrolled in 1956 and graduated in the spring of 1960, the other matriculated that fall, its members moving their…

Jeremy Black’s previous book, Other Pasts, Different Presents, Alternative Futures, is a sparkling defense of the legitimacy and utility of counterfactual history—of what ifs—and the best single work on its subject available. He turns here to a not unrelated, and equally weighty and vexing, issue:…

When Immanuel Kant posed his celebrated question, “Was ist Aufklärung?” in 1784, little could he have supposed that he’d inaugurate an inquiry that has yet to end and is unlikely to end soon. Appropriately, Kant’s was a philosopher’s question, not that of a historian, a question that sought answers…

Some treaties put a definitive end to wars and establish an enduring new order among states. The 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, which ended the 30 years of religious warfare that ravaged Europe in the early 17th century, was one of those. The 1919 Treaty of Versailles, which concluded World War I…

A noted historian of modern Germany, Richard J. Evans has entered the lists of historical combatants in recent years as a sharp opponent of counterfactual history—also known as “what ifs.” His entry into this particular fight, one that’s as enjoyable to witness as it is important to understand,…

History is rewritten and rehashed—in the lingo, it is “revised”—for many reasons, some of which have nothing to do with politics, ideology, or current academic trends. Sometimes, the reason is the sudden availability of never-before-seen documents; sometimes it’s a historian’s more thorough…

Probably in the seventh grade, Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s Last Days of Pompeii appeared on my summer reading list. I read the 1834 novel of ancient Roman life, adventure, mystery, and horror with the rapt attention of a boy drawn to a fictitious tale (which I doubt I knew was fictitious). But even had…

The importance of this book stretches beyond the subject it addresses. 

Historians’ memoirs have become a distinct subgenre of the memoir form. They’ve even been the subject of their own study: Jeremy D. Popkin’s History, Historians, and Autobiography. But why should historians’ memoirs be of interest to anyone, even to historians? Because, in addition to charting the…

Mention the names of Wellington, Nelson, and Pitt to any informed person and you’re likely to get a nod of recognition. But Castlereagh? A blank stare.  Yet the case can be made, and John Bew makes it convincingly, that Viscount Castlereagh was the equal of those three men and many other…

Few historians write about the long era of the American Revolution with greater authority than the author of the essays collected in this volume. One of the best-read scholars of his generation, for over roughly half a century Gordon Wood has written with a kind of infectious enthusiasm about what…

The Deadlocked Election of 1800 Jefferson, Burr, and the Union in the Balance by James Roger Sharp Kansas, 239 pp., $34.95

Empire of Liberty

Plain, Honest Men

A History of Histories

A Magnificent Catastrophe

Fallen Founder

George Mason

The Rise of American Democracy

John Witherspoon and the Founding of the American Republic