Editor’s Corner: War and Memory

18 May 2022 – Sarah H. Case

Editors’ Note: We publish the editor’s introduction to the May 2022 issue of The Public Historian here. The entire issue is available online to National Council on Public History members and to others with subscription access.

As Timothy Snyder, historian of Ukraine, reminds us, the myths, memories, and stories about a nation’s past shape its understanding of the present and the future. Read More

The National World War I Memorial in Washington, D.C.

08 July 2021 – Thomas J. Brown 2

Public monuments chart development within a cultural form at the same time they commemorate historical events. Maya Lin found inspiration in British architect Edwin Lutyens’s enduring World War I monuments when she designed her brilliant Vietnam Veterans Memorial (1981-82). In contrast, the World War I Memorial recently inaugurated with the raising of its first flag in Pershing Park on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D. Read More