Congratulations to @gauthamrao.bsky.social!!
Some books just take their time. I am inspired that yours is out!

Do you remember . . .

Check your public television schedules. “Becoming Thurgood” will air multiple times this week and throughout the month. Catch it!

For folks who are wondering just how long #SCOTUS has had the power to behave the way it’s behaving on emergency applications (mostly since 1925), and whether the Court’s recent behavior is meaningfully different from, say, prior to 2015 (it sure is), you might find my book at least somewhat useful:

Must-watch: “Becoming Thurgood.”

In NYC, it will be on starting in 10 minutes.

Charles Sumner, 1875, by #AnneWhitney (American, 1821-1915), who was born #otd, Sept 2. Located in General MacArthur Square, Cambridge, MA.
#womenartists #artherstory

In the NIH funding case, Justice Gorsuch (joined by Justice Kavanaugh) claimed that this was the third time in recent weeks that lower courts had "defied" a #SCOTUS ruling.

As today's "One First" explains, that claim is not only nonsense; it's enabling a dangerous anti-court narrative on the right:

That's a great question. I think I do because I read the secondary literature first& I often have other historians' thoughts on the matter top of mind. But I also keep a timeline/chronology right there too. "OK this was written in March 1922. What happened in February 1922 that may have shaped this"

This Day in Labor History: August 23, 1927. The state of Massachusetts executed two Italian immigrant anarchists by the names of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti for the murder of two men in a 1920 armed robbery in South Braintree. Their real crime: being Italian anarchists!

51 years ago, Richard Nixon resigned the presidency on national TV. Later that night, according to Jimmy Breslin’s account in How the Good Guys Finally Won, Nixon called a friend and said, “Yes, a lot of heads of state have gone to jail. Gandhi went to prison, you know.” loa.org/books/788

If judges are play-acting as historians and getting the history wildly wrong, then actual historians have a duty to step in and set the record straight.

Sorry if that doesn’t stop the free fall of the profession, but we’re going to keep doing it all the same, thanks

A Westlaw search suggests that it is the first law review article ever to cite this Onion classic ... theonion.com/supreme-cour...

Okay, friends this book is really *incredible*! I spent the last week devouring all 500 pages. I couldn’t put it down. I hardly knew anything of Sumner but the caning & am now convinced he deserves a prized place in our histories. Ahead of his time, principled & unafraid to speak unpopular truths.

From @ngertner.bsky.social & me in @nytimes.com: "Ms. Bondi wrote that Judge Boasberg’s comments 'have undermined the integrity of the judiciary . . . .' No. The way to look at this is the inverse: Her Justice Department is attempting to undermine the integrity of the judiciary and the rule of law."

I’d forgotten that I shared a birthday with the VRA — as well as former President Obama. Thanks @kevinmkruse.bsky.social for the reminder, and a great essay on the DOJ’s work in putting it into effect — and the amazingly rapid effects on the law. campaign-trails.ghost.io/work-in-prog...

Agree, though I think what we really, desperately need is a movie that runs from Appomattox to the Compromise of 1877. America needs an anti-Birth of a Nation to understand how the heroes of Reconstruction got
sidelined.

the voting rights act is, in its entirety, obviously constitutional under the 15th amendment, which gives congress broad and proactive authority to stop racial discrimination in voting. and you know it is obviously constitutional because roberts has had to invent entire new doctrines to gut it.

Starred review from @publisherswkly.bsky.social says The Radical Fund is “an immense and essential achievement” with an “exhilarating range of figures” and “stark parallels with the present.” www.publishersweekly.com/9781476765877

121/141 2025 Official Submission #MAAHStoneAtoZ

For example, Reconstruction. A generation of historians, from Eric Foner to Manisha Sinha, have built a rich portrait of the profound "unfinished revolution" of Reconstruction. I don't claim academic mastery, but it raised questions for me about Custer, though we associate him with the West.
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I write serious history—via biography—for a non-academic audience. So I'd like to say something about Ken Burns's remark, something that also explains why AI can't write history.

Pardon me for citing the example of one of my books, "Custer's Trials," on one of history's best-known figures.
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