The American Historical Review is widely considered the preeminent English-language journal for the discipline of history. The journal, a publication of the American Historical Association, is also conspicuously a captive of the left-wing bias that has permeated the teaching of history in Western universities. The American Historical Review is to the discipline of history what the Publications of the Modern Language Association is to literary studies: a repository of trendy, left-leaning, anti-American attitudes.

Of course there are exceptions: even the PMLA occasionally publishes something without obvious parti pris. But no reasonable observer can miss the bias. Thus it is business as usual that the lead article in the current number of the AHR (February 2001) is by the Marxist Eric Foner, this year’s president of the American Historical Association. Entitled &l ...

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