The claim that there were "surprising similarities" between the West and the more advanced regions of Asia as late as 1800-1830, and that the Industrial Revolution was the one transformation that set Europe apart from Asia is central to the arguments of multicultural historians such as Kenneth Pomeranz, Bin Wong, Jack Goldstone, John…

Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States" is the nation's best-known work of American history. It is also the nation's best-selling survey of American history, having sold two million copies since its publication in 1980 and still selling about 125,000 paperback copies yearly. The fifth and current edition covers America up…

The part played by Sally Hemings in the life of Thomas Jefferson has been regarded as provocatively dubious since political enemy James Callender claimed in 1802 that Jefferson was the father of several of Hemings's children. Historian Merrill Peterson, observing that paternity is hard to prove, wrote in 1960 that no concrete evidence was ever…

Although the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) never became a major player in American political life, it was a significant participant in mainstream politics and the trade union movement in the 1930s and 1940s. It has also been the focus of sustained attention by historians. An online bibliography of scholarly writing about domestic American communism…

Although the Vietnam War ended more than thirty years ago, historians remain as divided on what happened as the American people were during the war. Mark Moyar maps the ongoing battle between "orthodox" and "revisionist" Vietnam War historians: the first group, those who depict Vietnam as a bad war that the United States should…