Current History
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First published in 1914 to cover World War I, we are America's oldest magazine dedicated exclusively to world affairs. Nye Jr.
Current History is the oldest United States-based publication devoted exclusively to contemporary world affairs. The magazine was founded in 1914 by George Washington Ochs Oakes, brother of New York Times publisher Adolph Ochs, in order to provide detailed coverage of World War I. Current History was published by The New York Times Company from its founding until 1936. Since 1942 it has been owned by members of the Redmond family; its current publisher is Daniel Mark Redmond. Current History, based in Philadelphia, maintains no institutional, political, or governmental affiliation. It is published monthly, from September through May. Seven issues each year are devoted to world regions (China and East Asia, Russia and Eurasia, the Middle East, Latin America, Europe, South Asia, and Africa); one issue covers current global trends; and one issue addresses a special theme such as climate change or global governance. The magazine has followed this practice of devoting each issue to a single region or theme since 1953. Each issue includes a chronology of major international events, and most contain a book review section and an article devoted to commentary. Contributors to Current History in the publication's early years included George Bernard Shaw, Winston Churchill, Charles Beard, Allan Nevins, and Henry Steele Commager. More recently, the journal has featured authors such as James Schlesinger, Francis Fukuyama, Jeffrey Sachs, Bruce Riedel, Leslie H. Gelb, Bruce Russett, Elizabeth Economy, Charles Kupchan, Ivo Daalder, Joseph Cirincione, Phebe Marr, Juan Cole, Bruce Gilley, and Marina Ottaway. Shortly after Current History began publishing in 1914, its editor, Ochs Oakes, decided that a magazine recording “history in the making” should maintain as regular contributors a group of historians and social scientists. He enlisted the help of a Harvard historian, Albert Bushnell Hart, in organizing the journal’s initial group of contributing editors. Current History’s board of contributing editors today includes Catherine Boone (London School of Economics); Bruce Cumings (University of Chicago); Uri Dadush (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace); Deborah Davis (Yale University); Larry Diamond (Stanford University); Michele Dunne (Carnegie Endowment); Barry Eichengreen (University of California, Berkeley); C. Christine Fair (Georgetown University); Sumit Ganguly (Indiana University); G. John Ikenberry (Princeton University); Michael T. Klare (Hampshire College); Joshua Kurlantzick (Council on Foreign Relations); Michael McFaul (Stanford University); Rajan Menon (Lehigh University); Augustus Richard Norton (Boston University); Joseph S. (Harvard University); Bruce Russett (Yale University); Michael Shifter (Inter-American Dialogue); Arturo Valenzuela (Georgetown University); and Jeffrey Wasserstrom (University of California, Irvine). The publication’s editor is Lindsay Shingler.
09/01/2026
We are pleased to announce the release of the September 2026 issue of Current History. This issue features a timely and critical collection on Civil-Military Relations edited by Rebecca Best. Explore the complex dynamics and historical contexts that shape the relationship between state authority and military power:
Volume 125 Issue 874 | Current History | University of California Press Current History | 125 | 874 | September 2026
08/31/2026
Why has the war in Ukraine become a war over identity? Jesse Driscoll and Dominique Arel review seven major books to examine the competing ideas of nationhood, sovereignty, and empire that lie at the heart of Russia's war against Ukraine—and what they reveal about the conflict's possible future. Plus, in Reviews in Brief, Stephan Haggard assesses new books on Iran's grand strategy, Pan-Africanism, the intellectual roots of the MAGA new right, and Southeast Asia's cybercrime networks. Read the Book Reviews section from our July issue for free online: https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/issue/125/872-873
08/28/2026
"The songs are free."
Denise Sullivan traces the enduring role of music in American movements for justice, showing how artists from Billie Holiday and John Coltrane to Gil Scott-Heron and contemporary musicians have given voice to resistance, built community, and kept hope alive during periods of democratic crisis. Read her full article from our July issue free online here: https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article/125/872-873/46/218594/Winter-in-America
08/28/2026
The changing world order looks different depending on where you're sitting. In our July issue Dispatches, contributors writing from Oslo, Guatemala City, Cape Town, Canberra, Moscow, Chennai, and Jerusalem share personal reflections on the defining challenges facing their societies. Together, they offer a global snapshot of a world in transition. Read the full collection free online here: https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article/125/872-873/26/218591/Reflections-on-the-State-of-the-World
08/27/2026
Laura Gamboa argues that democratic transitions rarely succeed through the outright defeat of authoritarian regimes. More often, they require uncomfortable compromises that encourage regime insiders to defect. Those bargains may feel unjust, she contends, but history suggests they are often the price of democratic change.
Read the full article in the July issue of Current History:
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article/125/872-873/38/218585/The-Treacherous-Road-out-of-Autocracy
08/27/2026
"People are our only hope. But people are how we got here. But people are our only hope."
In a feature for our July issue, Lindsay Shingler reflects on inequality, social trust, and the moral choices shaping America today. Arguing that democratic renewal requires more than policy change, she makes the case for something equally essential: learning to see one another with greater generosity, dignity, and grace. Read the full article free online here: https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article/125/872-873/57/218582/How-Shall-We-Look-at-Each-Other-Then
08/25/2026
Folashadé Soulé shows how African states have used diplomacy, regional organizations, and international law to advance sovereignty, challenge global power imbalances, and expand their influence. As geopolitical competition intensifies, Africa is increasingly defining the terms of its own engagement with the world.
Read her full essay from our latest issue free online here: https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article/125/872-873/17/218587/Africa-in-the-Shifting-Global-Order
08/24/2026
What if the question "Is American democracy failing?" is the wrong one? Christian Davenport argues in Current History that treating the United States as a single democratic story obscures a far more complicated reality. Across American history, democracy and authoritarianism have coexisted in different places and at different times. Understanding those local differences, he suggests, is essential to strengthening democracy today. Read the full article: https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article/125/872-873/34/218583/The-Problem-with-American-Democracy
08/21/2026
Brian Matthew Jordan argues that American democracy depends on a "usable past"—a history that neither ignores the nation's failures nor surrenders to cynicism, but instead inspires citizens to continue the unfinished work of building a more perfect union. Drawing on Abraham Lincoln's vision of the Declaration of Independence as the nation's moral compass, he explores why history remains essential to democratic renewal. Read the full article: https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article/125/872-873/54/218580/In-Search-of-a-Usable-Past
08/20/2026
Stephanie Dinkins argues in the July issue of Current History that artificial intelligence is not neutral—it inherits the histories, inequalities, and assumptions embedded in the data that shape it. Rather than asking whether AI is friend or foe, she calls for new ways of designing and governing these systems that center care, community, and the many forms of knowledge machines too often overlook. Read the full article: https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article/125/872-873/49/218596/How-We-Survive-the-Machine
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