As July wraps up, the second month of the AHA Summer Reading Challenge ends with it. We asked AHA members, Council, and staff to share with us what history they had read in July to fulfill tasks in #AHAReads and we’ve compiled some of their responses.
Read a history of a place you’re visiting this summer.
Claire Boyle (DePaul Univ.) has been visiting her neurologist’s office, so Katherine Foxhall’s Migraine: A History fit the bill.
After a visit to a visit to Berkeley Springs and Shepherdstown, West Virginia, Debbie Ann Doyle (AHA director of meetings) read Ladies and Gentlemen on Display: Planter Society at the Virginia Springs, 1790–1860 by Charlene Boyer Lewis.
Patrick Sheridan (Univ. of Georgia) visited the Alamo, so has been reading Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and Jason Stanford (which also fits the co-authored history task!).
Read a history by a scholar whose day job is outside academia.
Zachary Matusheski learned more about Marine Corps culture from T. X. Hammes’s Forgotten Warriors: The 1st Provisional Marine Brigade, the Corps Ethos, and the Korean War.
Katie Singer (Whittier Coll.) chose How Lincoln Learned to Read: Twelve Great Americans and the Educations That Made Them by writer and poet Daniel Wolff.
Andrew D. Todd (Morgantown, West Virginia) read Wanderings: Chaim Potok’s History of the Jews and Gil Elliot’s Twentieth Century Book of the Dead together.
Rebecca L. West (AHA operations and communications assistant) appreciated the accessibility and timeliness of Jennifer Wright’s Madame Restell: The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Old New York’s Most Fabulous, Fearless, and Infamous Abortionist.
Read a history of Indigenous people.
Reading Hi’ilei Julia Kawehipuaakahaopulani Hobart’s Cooling the Tropics: Ice, Indigeneity, and Hawaiian Refreshment had Laura Ansley (AHA senior managing editor) reaching for an iced beverage.
Jenny Baniewicz (Amos Alonzo Stagg High School and AHA Council) is looking forward to using what she’s learned from Ned Blackhawk’s The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History in her classes this fall.
Michael Romero (Williamsburg, Virginia) turned to local history with The Powhatan Indians of Virginia by Helen C. Rountree.
Kara W. Swanson (Northeastern University) pulled Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s An Indigenous People’s History of the United States off her shelf.
For her second task this month, Rebecca L. West read an adapted excerpt of Colin G. Calloway’s The Indian World of George Washington: The First President, the First Americans, and the Birth of the Nation.
Read a piece of historical fiction set in the time or place you study.
Joseph Adelman (Framingham State Univ.) wishes he had read Revolutionary by Alex Myers, an excellent novel and exploration of gender identity.
For a second task, Laura Ansley enjoyed Winnie West Has an Agenda by Kat Sterling, a romance novel that starred a Seattle suffragist in 1908.
Inspired by debates over the book at a 2023 conference panel she was on, Wendi Kavanaugh (Anna, Texas) turned to Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia for this task.
Louise Kowitch (retired, Farmington High School) recommends Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis trilogy as a “diverting summer read.”
For his second July task, Michael Romero visited the period of the Seven Years War with Perilous Shore by Chris Durbin.
Learn from a historian presenting their scholarship in an amicus brief, digital collection, exhibition, podcast, video, or another format outside traditional academic publishing.
During her trip to Berkeley Springs, Debbie Ann Doyle completed a second task, learning from the exhibits at the local history museum.
Zachary Matusheski also listened to an episode of the MacArthur Memorial podcast during which historian John Long talked about D-Day.
Michael Novak (George Washington’s Mount Vernon) watched a video lecture by apprentice joiner Amanda Doggett (Colonial Williamsburg) on working women in the 18th century, which countered the incorrect assumption that women working outside the home, especially in manual labor jobs, is a 20th-century development.
It’s not too late to join the challenge! Simply select three tasks to complete before Labor Day. Post about your reading on the AHA Member Forum or on social media using the hashtag #AHAReads. You might even see your books show up in a future post on Perspectives Daily.
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