Lincoln, President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter, 1860-1861
In the four months between Abraham Lincoln’s election and inauguration, the president-elect made the most important decision of his coming presidency: there would be no compromise on slavery or secession of the slaveholding states, even at the cost of an inevitable Civil War. Two scholars examine this pivotal four-month period, Lincoln’s public stance, and the […]
The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family
Historians have recently uncovered the Hemings family, who had close blood ties with President Thomas Jefferson’s family. Annette Gordon-Reed, a professor at New York Law School and Rutgers University, and Brent Staples, an editorial writer for The New York Times discuss the origins of the Hemings family in Virginia in the 1700s until the death […]
James Madison and the Constitution
He was a delegate to the Continental Congress, the Father of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, a founder of his party, and one of the first presidents of the United States. Yet James Madison remains relatively uncelebrated. Three experts discuss Madison’s enormous achievements and his legacy, and debate why he has so often […]
The late Arthur Schlesinger Jr., the great scholar of the New Deal, liked to talk about how the best historians know that history is “an argument without end.” Now a new generation of authors has taken up that argument, and it’s as controversial as ever. Join columnists Amity Shlaes and Jonathan Alter as they square […]
Orientalism: The Roots of Modernism
The 19th century had a love affair with the Arabic Middle East. For some it was all about an exoticism which we today might think of as romantic, ornamental, even “superficial,” much like the craze for chinoiserie in the 1700s. But “Orientalism” in architecture, when processed by creative Western designers, also served as a root […]
When and how did New Yorkers come to regard tenants as having rights and landlords as having obligations? Where should the fine line be drawn between the free market and government oversight of rent issues? What is the future of housing in NYC? Panelists are Gale Brewer (NYC Councilmember, District 6), Elizabeth Blackmar (Columbia University), […]
Is New York as green as it can be? That was the topic of this discussion at the New-York Historical Society moderated by Elizabeth Barlow Rogers of the Foundation for Landscape Studies. The participants were Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff, NYC Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe, Robert Yaro of the Regional Plan Association, […]
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