An Incomplete History

This week Hilary and Geoff provide a little context for the often-torturous relationship between the United States and Iran. Join us as we discuss the beginnings of diplomatic contact between the countries in the nineteenth century, the rise of US involvement in the post-World War 2 Middle East, the first peace-time coup engineered by US intelligence, the Hostage Crisis, and more.

An Incomplete History returns from winter break with a special episode. We discuss the biggest events of 2019 and put them into broader historical contexts. Join Hilary and Geoff as they try to predict what historians will consider important about the last year. What will historians ten, fifty, and a hundred years from now say about 2019? Join us for our take.

Join Hilary and Geoff as they discuss the legacy of Pearl Harbor. Elements of the Japanese Navy attacked the naval base at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 and FDR delivered one of the most famous speeches in presidential history on the 8th. How should we remember Pearl Harbor? Was is really a surprise or had the US and Japan been involved in a simmering conflict for some time? To learn more join us for this special episode of An Incomplete History.

Hilary and Geoff are back to discuss the Second Amendment (that’s the one about guns). Join us as we trace the antecedents to the Second Amendment. How did English common law and the 1689 Bill of Rights influence its conceptualization? How formative were the state constitutions of 1776/77? How have major Supreme Court decisions influenced out own views? We even discuss a major historical work first celebrated then vilified for its take on America's gun culture. Join us on An Incomplete History for this installment of our series on the Bill of Rights.

This week Hilary and Geoff start a new series of episodes devoted to the Bill of Rights. We're starting at the beginning and doing a deep dive into the First Amendment. Along the way we'll discuss Prince John and the Magna Carta, the English Civil War, John Locke, the Glorious Revolution, and even the Virginia Declaration of Rights issued a month before the Declaration of Independence!

Join us this week as we discuss how prevalent alcohol consumption was in the British Colonial period and the Early Republic. Hint: it was a lot! Rum, beer, whiskey, Madeira wine, each served important economic, social, and political roles in the early US history. How did early Americans function when alcohol was so widely available? Were there early critics of alcohol? How did early drinking patterns influence social reform movements? Find out on this week's episode.

It may be the most important year in American history! Labor unrest, mail bombs, Anarchist plots, industrial accidents, mass deportations, rising racial tensions, and a government spying on its own citizens. The headlines from 1919 bear a striking resemblance to the present. Prohibition began, women's suffrage came one step closer to being a reality, and the nation was wracked with some of the worst racial violence since the Civil War. Join Hilary and Geoff for a discussion of the year that marked the end of the Progressive Era.

What do Abraham Lincoln, JFK, Apollo 11, the Atlanta Child Murders, and 9/11 have in common? Each has one or more conspiracy theories surrounding it. Why have Americans seemingly always been drawn to conspiracy theories? Join Hilary and Geoff as they discuss both the broader cultural obsession with conspiracies and several historical examples. We’ll be discussing the previously referenced theories as well as some from the 18th and 19th centuries you may never have heard of but which captured the public imagination just as much as our modern conspiracy obsessions. We’ll also talk about how to deal with conspiracy theories in the classroom.

Shays's Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion are two conflicts during the Early Republic that you may have only heard of in passing. Today Hilary and Geoff discuss why they are events everyone should have some knowledge of. They were formative for the US Constitution, for subsequently reorganized state governments, relations between cities and rural spaces, class tensions, the memory of George Washington, and even the nature and meaning of the American Revolution itself.

HIlary and Geoff are back discussing controversial topics. On this week's episode they discuss the history of impeachment. Many people talk about it today but there seems to be a lack of concrete knowledge and context regarding impeachment, the Constitution, the purpose of impeaching a president, and even how to discuss these types of topics in the classroom. We'll cover all that and more this time on An Incomplete History.