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Articles by Jay Winik
New library books
These works on U.S. History are newly available through the Allen County Public Library. “The Ride: Paul Revere and the Night That Saved America” by Kostya Kennedy Kennedy re- examines the famous midnight ride, revealing it as a complex, collaborative effort involving multiple riders and several near-disasters, while exploring its pivotal role in the early stages of the American Revolution through fresh archival research and overlooked historical accounts.
1861: The Lost Peace
“Not that I gave a ten-cent dam for that, you understand, and still don’t. They could have kept their idiotic Civil War for me, for (my own skin’s safety apart) it was the foulest, most useless conflict in history, the mass suicide of the flower of the British-American race --- and for what? Black freedom, which would have come in a few years anyway, as sure as sunrise.
14 Father’s Day Gifts Every History Buff Dad Secretly Wants
Guys can be notoriously hard to shop for, making Father’s Day a particularly challenging time for gift-givers. We don’t want to leave poor old Dad hanging with a rushed, last-minute gift he’ll never use, but sometimes his personal interests can feel a bit obscure — especially if he’s a so-called “history buff.” Amazon If wars, landmarks, maps and archives are your dad’s thing, then you’re in luck. We’ve rounded up the best Father’s Day gifts for dads who can’t get enough of the past.
1861: The Lost Peace
. May 2025. 304p. ISBN 9781538735121. $35. HIST COPY ISBN Historian Winik ( 1944: FDR and the Year That Changed History) presents a view of the coming U.S. Civil War from the view of elected officials and their efforts to avert the fracture of the country. Among the efforts to avoid the secession of the eight slave states, and inevitable bloodshed, was the Peace Conference held at the Willard Hotel in Washington, DC. Seven states that had already seceded from the Union did not attend the conference.
California Literary Review
France In twelve short years – from 1788 to 1800 – the world changed, with the late eighteenth century emerging as one of the most momentous, if restless, eras in human history. In Russia, a great dynasty would be toppled; in France, revolution and the guillotine would hold sway; and, in America, the nascent democracy would enter the most critical period of its short existence. The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World, 1788-1800 HarperCollins, 688pp.
A Day-by-Day Re-Creation of Truman’s Decision to Use Nuclear Weapons
nonfiction After the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. COUNTDOWN 1945 The Extraordinary Story of the Atomic Bomb and the 116 Days That Changed the World By Chris Wallace with Mitch Weiss On April 12, 1945, Franklin Roosevelt, beloved by the American people, was sick and depleted. Convalescing in Georgia after an exhausting summit with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin about ending the war and creating the peace to follow, he slumped in his chair, dead from a cerebral hemorrhage.
The Great Upheaval by Jay Winik
Fire in the Blood by Irène Némirovsky, Translated by Sandra Smith Knopf, 160 pp. CLR [rating:4] Proust Redux By the time Irène Némirovsky’s Suite Française burst upon the French literary world in 2004, the Russian-French author was forgotten. Despite her pre-World War II Parisian success with her dazzling first novel, David Golder, and following it, The Ball, Snow in Autumn, Dogs and Wolves and The Courilof Afffair, her name together with her person had pretty much faded away.
Opinion | Do Abolitionists Owe Reparations?
More than a century and a half after the ratification of the 13th Amendment, slavery is a hot issue in the Democratic presidential campaign. “We need a national, full-blown conversation about reparations,” says Sen. Elizabeth Warren. “I believe this country needs to address the original sin of slavery,” adds former Housing Secretary Julián Castro. Sen.
Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick
Recommended and rated this book A very realistic view of how the pilgrims survived and prospered. Not your traditional Thanksgiving story....shows them as real people, warts and all! They were hard, scheming, political, and vicious as well as pious religious refugees. History at its best. Reasons I enjoyed this book: Action-packed Original Realistic Recommended and rated this book Such a great read. I loved this.
Waging war from the Oval Office
PRESIDENTS OF WAR Michael Beschloss Crown 739 pages; $35 The most agonising decisions presidents make are invariably during wartime, especially when battles are lost and body counts pile up. During one of the bloodiest campaigns of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln paced the corridors of the White House, his head bowed, hands behind his back, muttering over and over, “I must have some relief from this terrible anxiety or it will kill me.” It practically did.
Waging War From the Oval Office
The most agonizing decisions presidents make are invariably during wartime, especially when battles are lost and body counts pile up. During one of the bloodiest campaigns of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln paced the corridors of the White House, his head bowed, hands behind his back, muttering over and over, “I must have some relief from this terrible anxiety or it will kill me.” It practically did.
Our Man in Charleston by Christopher Dickey
Between the Confederacy and recognition by Great Britain stood one unlikely Englishman who hated the slave trade. His actions helped determine the fate of a nation. When Robert Bunch arrived in Charleston to take up the post of British consul in 1853, he was young and full of ambition, but even he couldn’t have imagined the incredible role he would play in the history-making events to unfold. In … events to unfold.
Trump’s Critics Desecrate the Holocaust
Almost everyone, including President Trump, agrees that separating alien children from their parents and housing them in detention centers was an untenable policy that needed to be changed. Some have said, not without justification, that the images were reminiscent of the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. But another comparison is indefensible.
Summitry Can Be Risky Business
How risky is the proposed summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un? As America’s greatest modern presidents have found, summitry is an inherently high-stakes gamble. No matter how well scripted, events can take on a life of their own—or go dangerously awry. In negotiations, Mr. Trump is known for making snap decisions that amount to seismic policy shifts. It’s unclear whether this unpredictability would work in Washington’s favor or Pyongyang’s.
What John Kelly Got Right About Robert E. Lee
Robert E. Lee is back in the news thanks to White House Chief of Staff John Kelly. In a Fox News interview Monday, Mr. Kelly called Gen. Lee “an honorable man” and observed that “men and women of good faith on both sides made their stand where their conscience had made them stand.” Mr. Kelly has a point. It is worth remembering that Lee, who has lately been painted as a traitorous caricature, embodied in countless ways the poignancy and tragedy of the Civil War.
A Lincoln Lesson for Donald Trump | RealClearPolitics
A Lincoln Lesson for Donald Trump | RealClearPolitics
A Lincoln Lesson for Donald Trump
After his surprise win in the presidential election of 1860, Abraham Lincoln gathered a coterie of reporters and enthused, “Well boys, your troubles are over now; mine have only just begun.” Lincoln didn’t realize how prescient he was, or the challenges he would face. In response to his assuming office, most of the South seceded from the Union. Then the crisis at Fort Sumter escalated, threatening to engulf the nation. Lincoln’s cabinet vehemently favored diplomacy and evacuating Fort Sumter.
U.S. Revolution Inspired Imitators, Fleetingly
Prelude At the Threshold He had survived more than seventy summers of wet, fly infested heat. And more than seventy winters too. He had outlasted infection and epidemics. He was almost as hard a man as the New England stone that marked his fields. He is believed to have once beaten a servant so badly that the man died from the wounds; he fought with his neighbors, even stole from them, and, in his last year of life, failed to defend his wife when she was accused of being a witch.
Book about 1944 provides insights into current events
1944: FDR and the Year That Changed History Sometimes a story does not have to be new. It does not have to contain startling revelations or striking conclusions overlooked by other authors. No exclusives. No cliché hype. Sometime it is, simply put, just a story that is so important, so vital to the understanding of a civilization and its dreadful conflicts that it must be retold periodically in a fresh voice for a new generation, lest it be forgotten. or worse, it be denied as a fiction.
Darkness at Noon: FDR and the Holocaust
Funded largely by private donations, the War Refugee Board was founded frightfully late, and in millions of instances too late, in January 1944. Nonetheless, after the appointment of a new interim director, Treasury Secretary John Morgenthau’s hard-nosed counsel John Pehle, the board got down to business.
The Weekly Standard
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The Weekly Standard
Hide Get alerts when there is a new article that might interest you. Please sign me up for The Weekly Standard weekly newsletter. The Weekly Standard reserves the right to use your email for internal use only. Occasionally, we may send you special offers or communications from carefully selected advertisers we believe may be of benefit to our subscribers. Click the box to be included in these third party offers. We respect your privacy and will never rent or sell your email.
The Weekly Standard
Hide Get alerts when there is a new article that might interest you. Please sign me up for The Weekly Standard weekly newsletter. The Weekly Standard reserves the right to use your email for internal use only. Occasionally, we may send you special offers or communications from carefully selected advertisers we believe may be of benefit to our subscribers. Click the box to be included in these third party offers. We respect your privacy and will never rent or sell your email.
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