This article explores how diaries, official Nazi records, photographs, and survivor testimonies allow us to reconstruct the Holocaust as it was experienced and understood by contemporaries. Drawing on major archival collections, it shows the power and limits of primary sources.
From the rise of the Nazis to the end of World War II, American newspapers carried a varied but often incomplete picture of the Holocaust. This article explores what readers actually saw in print, decade by decade, using primary sources from the U.S. press.
Drawing on personal letters, diaries, and contemporary commentary, this article explores how women experienced the hard-won victory of suffrage and the emergence of the ‘New Woman’ in the 1920s—their hopes, fears, and expectations as recorded in their own words.
Drawing on photographs, diaries, and official records, this article reconstructs the daily routines of American children in the early 20th century—from farm chores to city street work—and reveals how they experienced school, play, and labor in an era of sweeping change.
A look at how American and British newspapers covered the Space Race from Sputnik to Apollo 11, revealing the fear, predictions, and perspectives of the time.
In 1966, Kuwait stood at a crossroads of tradition and modernity, as oil revenues transformed the small Gulf state into a regional powerhouse. The year saw the founding of Kuwait University, the appointment of a new Crown Prince, and the publication of detailed statistical abstracts that captured a society in flux.
Drawing on contemporary newspaper reports and official accounts, this article reconstructs the bloodless coup that toppled King Farouk in July 1952, the hopes and fears of Egyptians at the time, and the revolution’s lasting impact on the Arab world.
Drawing on the personal letters and diaries of American servicemen in Korea, this article reconstructs the daily grind, fears, and hopes of the front line between 1950 and 1953, revealing how mail call sustained morale and how soldiers made sense of the ‘police action’.
Between 1933 and 1938, thousands of American children wrote letters to Eleanor Roosevelt, describing their hunger, their fears, and their hopes. This article draws on those letters and other primary sources to show how the Great Depression was experienced by its youngest victims.
Drawing on contemporary reports and the recollections of those who built it, this article reconstructs Operation Fortitude—the Allied deception that conjured a phantom army in England to mislead Hitler about the Normandy invasion.