US History

Gordon S. Wood, 1933-2026: Leading historian of the American Revolution

Tue, 09 Jun 2026 04:19:00 GMT

Gordon S. Wood, 92, a leading historian of the American Revolution, died Sunday after being struck by a car. His career spanned more than half a century, most of it at Brown University, where he trained generations of early Americanists and helped shape modern interpretation of the Revolutionary era.

“Saxophone Colossus” Sonny Rollins dies at 95

Sat, 06 Jun 2026 01:28:23 GMT

His death marks the physical and “biographical” end of an era that began with the founding of bebop in New York during the final years of World War II.

Miles Davis at 100, a complex figure reflecting a complex time

Sat, 30 May 2026 01:31:38 GMT

The jazz world is celebrating the centenary of jazz trumpet master and bandleader Miles Davis, one of the 20th century’s most impactful musicians.

Lincoln and the enduring legacy of America’s second revolution: A reply to a critic of the “Letter from afar”

Fri, 22 May 2026 20:31:02 GMT

It is “fitting and proper,” to use Lincoln’s words, to invoke the historical experience of America’s past revolutions to bring to the surface and activate the deep-rooted democratic convictions of the working class.

A letter from afar by A. Lincoln

Tue, 19 May 2026 19:33:54 GMT

The following letter, signed “A. Lincoln” but without a return address or subject line, appeared in my email this morning. No sooner had I made a copy of the letter than it disappeared from my inbox. Despite its strange and unexplained origin, the signature demands that attention be given to the letter; and, for this reason, it is being made available to readers of the WSWS.

From Port Huron to postmodernism: The class politics of the “New” Students for a Democratic Society

Mon, 04 May 2026 01:26:07 GMT

The "New" SDS substitutes identity politics for class analysis, bourgeois nationalism for socialist internationalism and protest theater for the independent mobilization of the working class against the capitalist parties and the system they defend.

Gettysburg and the New Birth of Freedom—then and now

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 04:14:26 GMT

We are publishing a lecture delivered by WSWS contributor Tom Mackaman to the International Youth and Students for Social Equality at Gettysburg University on April 23.

Art and the Influence of Revolution

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 23:38:07 GMT

No serious understanding of 20th-century cultural life is possible without considering the impact of the socialist movement and its decades-long struggle to raise the thinking and activity of the working class, culminating in the 1917 Revolution.

Socialism in the “reactionary” Southwest: Lessons from James Green’s Grass-Roots Socialism

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 01:23:15 GMT

Green's book shows that, beneath the familiar myth of the reactionary Southwest, there lay a vibrant world of tenant-farmer revolt, labor militancy, and interracial socialist organizing.

Marty Supreme: A table tennis star’s frantic fight for fame

Sat, 21 Feb 2026 02:34:22 GMT

This movie uses the technique of “propulsive filmmaking,” while viewing the experience of Jews in America through the lens of identity politics.

World Socialist Revolution is the answer to imperialist war and fascism

Fri, 20 Feb 2026 03:18:59 GMT

David North delivered lectures online at the invitation of Social Democracy clubs at Bilkent University and Middle East Technical University, both located in Ankara, Turkey. The lectures were delivered on February 17 and 19.

Trump falsifies the history of the Mexican-American War

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 03:12:54 GMT

The Mexican-American War, fought to preserve slavery, helped bring on its destruction in the Civil War and imposed a border whose consequences still shape American politics.

250 years since the publication of Tom Paine’s Common Sense

Sat, 31 Jan 2026 03:59:20 GMT

Paine’s revolutionary assault on monarchy and aristocracy cleared the way for American independence a quarter millenium ago—and speaks urgently to the present.

Revolutionary leadership and the Minneapolis general strike of 1934

Thu, 15 Jan 2026 23:30:31 GMT

The events in Minneapolis in 1934 show what the working class can accomplish when it fights based on an independent class perspective.

From Roosevelt to Trump: The Monroe Doctrine and US imperialism’s predatory record in Venezuela

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 03:09:59 GMT

Washington’s aims encompass far more than Venezuela, amounting to a drive for the recolonization of Latin America and the subordination of the region to US profit interests and preparation for world war.

From Roosevelt to Trump: The Monroe Doctrine and US imperialism’s predatory record in Venezuela

Tue, 30 Dec 2025 00:37:21 GMT

Grant’s Enforcer: Taking Down the Klan

Mon, 29 Dec 2025 23:36:45 GMT

Grant’s Enforcer is an important reminder that political reaction is not all-powerful.

Richard Linklater’s Blue Moon: Rodgers and Hart, without much music

Sat, 27 Dec 2025 02:24:38 GMT

In this depiction of the end of Lorenz Hart’s career and his life, his legacy gets short-changed.

Former political prisoner Gary Tyler publishes Stitching Freedom: A True Story of Injustice, Defiance, and Hope in Angola Prison

Fri, 26 Dec 2025 23:11:53 GMT

The autobiographical volume is both a history of a frame-up and a warning of contemporary significance.

The centenary of Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy

Fri, 19 Dec 2025 01:51:03 GMT

The most serious artists in the 1920s and early 1930s anticipated or often even assumed that society was proceeding to a new and higher stage.

Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt: Zero net displacement on a flat plane

Mon, 15 Dec 2025 03:30:55 GMT

It sets out the various sides in an episode where a sexual assault has been alleged with such even-handedness that drawing larger conclusions is challenging.

Painter Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) at New York’s Guggenheim Museum: “Life Can’t Be Stopped”

Sat, 06 Dec 2025 04:53:24 GMT

Rauschenberg belonged to a generation of artists that emerged between the twilight of Abstract Expressionism and the dawn of Pop Art.

Ken Burns’ The American Revolution

Tue, 25 Nov 2025 03:31:19 GMT

Audiences cannot help but grasp the relevance of the film’s subject—a population revolting against tyranny and despotism in the name of equality and inalienable rights.

Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush: A century after its release

Fri, 31 Oct 2025 23:13:29 GMT

In creating his Little Tramp character, Chaplin took a social type that was reviled by official bourgeois society—the vagrant, the unemployed man, the person without property—and turned him into arguably the most beloved character in the world.

King Vidor’s World War I film The Big Parade at 100

Wed, 01 Oct 2025 01:46:24 GMT

With its soldier's eye view, realistic depiction of battle and rejection of national chauvinism, the film departed significantly from previous treatments of the imperialist slaughter.

Trump administration celebrates the perpetrators of the Wounded Knee Massacre

Tue, 30 Sep 2025 02:00:19 GMT

The decision by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is a warning: The lessons of Wounded Knee are not consigned to the past, but must urgently be recalled as a present danger.

Lincoln’s Peace: The Struggle to End the American Civil War, by Michael Vorenberg

Thu, 25 Sep 2025 22:16:01 GMT

To Vorenberg, the answer to the question of when the war ended, as a political matter, appears to lie in the passage of the Reconstruction Act in March 1867, which specified that states would remain under military rule unless and until they ratified the 14th Amendment, provided freed Black males the right to vote, and barred insurrectionists from obtaining public office.

American actor Robert Redford (1936-2025)

Wed, 24 Sep 2025 03:05:19 GMT

His popularity was not a fluke. Redford brought charm, calm intelligence and sophistication to his best work. His was an appealing personality and presence, not simply based on his handsome face.

Historic images of slavery removed by national parks after Trump directive

Fri, 19 Sep 2025 21:55:39 GMT

The removal of powerful Civil War era photography from public museums is the latest in a series of attacks on historical truth orchestrated by the White House.

Trump’s war on culture: The authoritarian logic of “Making Federal Architecture Beautiful Again”

Tue, 16 Sep 2025 00:22:16 GMT

Trump’s Executive Order imposes authoritarian aesthetics for buildings, codifies kitsch and signals a broader assault on cultural freedom.

Trump issues threats against Smithsonian exhibitions and art works

Mon, 08 Sep 2025 00:41:43 GMT

President Trump has launched an aggressive campaign against the Smithsonian Institute, accusing the museum of promoting “anti-American ideology.”

100 years of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby

Fri, 29 Aug 2025 23:58:37 GMT

Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby was published 100 years ago. What accounts for its continuing popularity and resonance?

The 1619 Project revisited: A retrospective evaluation in light of Trump’s assault on democracy

Thu, 28 Aug 2025 03:35:01 GMT

It is now clear that the main consequence of the 1619 Project’s attack on the American Revolution and Civil War was to disarm the population in the face of the fascist threat.

A further comment on Brian Wilson’s life and music

Mon, 07 Jul 2025 23:18:56 GMT

The cultural consciousness of posterity is enriched by Wilson’s 1962–1967 output. His greatest accomplishments during that period remain relevant, genuine, substantial, and intensely moving.

Brian Wilson (1942-2025) expressed both joy and tragedy through his harmonies

Mon, 23 Jun 2025 02:42:32 GMT

Brian Wilson and the band he founded, the Beach Boys, made an indelible mark on American popular music.

John Singer Sargent at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art: Sargent and Paris

Sat, 21 Jun 2025 01:12:44 GMT

The exhibition examines a crucial decade in the career of this portraitist of the bourgeoisie, who combined artistic daring with a quasi-aristocratic and conventional outlook.

Seven Days in May (1964): When American filmmaking envisioned a military coup

Wed, 11 Jun 2025 02:13:31 GMT

The headline of Monday's perspective referred to the well-known 1964 film Seven Days in May, which imagined a conspiracy by “a military-political cabal to take over the government of the United States.”

Detroit Opera production of The Central Park Five takes aim at Trump

Fri, 30 May 2025 01:33:45 GMT

Davis’s music, an eclectic blend of jazz, blues, classical and hip hop, serves as a background to the story, reinforcing moods of anguish and tension as the young men and their families go through their ordeal.

The Virginia Opera’s Loving v. Virginia revisits critical civil rights battle of the 1960s

Tue, 27 May 2025 23:48:35 GMT

The opera centers on the struggle to end laws against interracial marriage in Virginia and speaks powerfully as well to democratic issues today.

Revolutionary struggle and the unity of the international working class

Wed, 07 May 2025 02:21:24 GMT

This speech was given by Will Lehman, an autoworker at Mack Trucks in Macungie, Pennsylvania and member of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees, at the International May Day 2025 Online Rally, held Saturday, May 3.

Trump’s dictatorship, global war, and the fight for socialism

Tue, 06 May 2025 01:45:28 GMT

The WSWS is posting here both the video and text of the speech by Socialist Equality Party (US) National Secretary Joseph Kishore to the International May Day 2025 Online Rally.

Cultural counterrevolution: Funds cut from humanities grants to go toward Trump’s fascistic “National Garden of American Heroes”

Sat, 12 Apr 2025 02:47:44 GMT

Trump first broached the issue of a patriotic sculpture garden in July 2020, using the attacks on various monuments by participants in demonstrations against police violence as his pretext.

100 years since the birth of Viola Liuzzo (1925-1965), martyr of the civil rights movement

Fri, 11 Apr 2025 21:15:09 GMT

We are reposting an article from April 10, 2015, on 50 years since Viola Liuzzo’s death, written by Helen Halyard.

American filmmaker David Lynch (1946-2025)

Mon, 24 Mar 2025 02:48:35 GMT

Lynch attracted so much attention and interest in part because he stood out as an expressive, undoubtedly unusual figure in the generally bleak cultural landscape of the Reagan-Bush-Clinton years.

Trump executive order revives discredited 1776 Commission, mandating the falsification of American history in K-12 schools

Sat, 22 Mar 2025 00:01:15 GMT

In falsifying history, the oligarchs in charge are attempting to erase any critical thoughts youth may have about American policy in the present, especially the massive growth in economic inequality, the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the ever-present threat of war against China, Iran and Russia.

Donald Trump “celebrates” Black History Month with the black elite

Mon, 03 Mar 2025 01:49:26 GMT

Those in attendance agree that black history is really all about personal aggrandizement, not common sacrifice and struggle.

The political issues behind the Trump administration’s attack on DEI

Mon, 03 Mar 2025 01:47:15 GMT

The White House is using widespread animosity toward DEI to arrogate new powers to the executive branch and dismantle democratic rights.

The Brutalist: A Holocaust survivor reclaims his life

Sat, 01 Mar 2025 04:56:52 GMT

There are striking images and certain convincing performances, but on the whole the filmmakers seem very much out of their depth. The work is starved of genuine historical and social insight.

Nickel Boys ignores history in favor of psychology

Tue, 25 Feb 2025 00:36:40 GMT

By taking a subjective, “lyrical” approach, director RaMell Ross has turned a novel about racism into a narrower, murkier movie.

An interview with Elijah Wald, author of Dylan Goes Electric!

Thu, 13 Feb 2025 03:53:55 GMT

Wald's Dylan Goes Electric is the work on which the recent film about Bob Dylan’s early days in music, A Complete Unknown (James Mangold), is loosely based.