The Future in Context

"All modern American literature," Ernest Hemingway once proclaimed, "comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn." Despite such accolades, this masterwork from Twain — the pen name used by Samuel Clemens — has been slowly disappearing from American classrooms, a development primarily driven by the novel's repeated use — 219 times in all — of that uniquely offensive term that we uneasily refer to as the N-word.

Defending an "unteachable" classic of American literature has become the life's work of a Twain scholar, costing him professionally and personally.

After a stormy confirmation process characterized by partisan recriminations in the U.S. Senate, Ketanji Brown Jackson appears to be set to take her seat on the Supreme Court. More than three dozen others have been denied over the last 235 years.

This is the third in a Governing series on a historical look at the Supreme Court to coincide with nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson's confirmation process, which continued this week before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Just 51 years old, nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson, if confirmed, would join a growing list of relatively young justices who are likely to serve for much longer than was anticipated when lifetime appointments were first codified.

With hearings underway to fill an opening on the Supreme Court, it may be useful to look back on the history of court appointments. "Appointments," Thomas Jefferson said, "and disappointments."

Our resident historian Clay Jenkinson explores three things – court packing, judicial review and meeting the expectations of the appointing presidents – that are not what you thought they were.

The Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol stands as a prevailing symbol of the country's present-day polarization. But while the brutality of that day sits in the minds of many Americans as unprecedented, Yale historian Joanne Freeman reminds us that violence within the Capitol has a long history.

In The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War, Joanne Freeman details the congressional brawls, threats, beatings, stabbings and gun play that emerged from the unsavory cocktail of slavery, regional and party politics, and dysfunctional codes of personal honor that permeated Washington in the decades leading up to the Civil War. The book, released four years ago, provides context to the congressional investigation of the attack and a fresh debate about the country's civic health

A Centuries-Old Travel Guide Unlocks Clues to Our Future. In 1788, Thomas Jefferson hastily wrote an account of his travels in Europe for two friends. That obscure guide sent a Virginia attorney on a journey that connects past and present in unexpected ways.

Concrete, steel and turbines play an outsize role in the past and future of water in western states. The evolution of the sprawling cities of the American West is inextricably bound to America's 20th-century fascination with dam-building. But that decades-long story, rife with dammed and diverted rivers as well as political intrigue, is being reshaped by climate change, drought and overuse into a tale of ecologic and economic misadventure. Despite the problematic history of the big dam projects, however, historian Char Miller insists that objective assessment requires acknowledgment of both the benefits these structures have provided and the good intentions involved in their creation.

We lose a lot in our understanding of the Founding Fathers, says John Ragosta, an historian at the Robert H. Smith Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello, when we see them only as marble statues. They were real people who made mistakes and who got mad at one another. Patrick Henry so angered fellow Virginian Thomas Jefferson in 1781, Ragosta maintains, that his reputation never recovered from the impact of Jefferson's wrath. Ragosta hopes to shed new light on Henry's life and contributions in an upcoming book, and he recently discussed his research with Governing Editor-at-Large Clay Jenkinson.

Hamilton, Adams, Jefferson and the struggle for a more perfect union.

America's consciousness is indelibly shaped by the competing legacies of three distinct personalities: a fast-talking New Yorker, a quintessential Yankee, and a Virginia Squire. In his book, Hamilton, Adams, Jefferson: The Politics of Enlightenment and the American Founding, historian Darren Staloff explores the social, intellectual, and personal dynamics that shaped these men and helped define the Nation.