Category: Cartoon

Andrew C. McKevitt: Globalization’s Heroes in the Age of Trumpism

Today we welcome a guest blog post from Andrew C. McKevitt, author of Consuming Japan: Popular Culture and the Globalizing of 1980s, on the popularity and impact of anime and manga in America today. Consuming Japan explores the intense and ultimately fleeting moment in 1980s America when the future looked Japanese. Would Japan’s remarkable post–World War II economic success enable the East Asian… Continue Reading Andrew C. McKevitt: Globalization’s Heroes in the Age of Trumpism

Cartoon: Jesse and Frank James Discover the Risks of Railroad Robbery, by M.W. Summers

Political cartoon and commentary by historian Mark Wahlgren Summers: meet two men who eclipsed Jesse and Frank James in their exploitative conquests. Continue Reading Cartoon: Jesse and Frank James Discover the Risks of Railroad Robbery, by M.W. Summers

Cartoon: John B. Gordon Takes Umbrage and Crisp Twenties, by Mark Wahlgren Summers

Today’s cartoon and commentary by historian and illustrator Summers features the hypocrisy of some politician-businessman relations in the Reconstruction South Continue Reading Cartoon: John B. Gordon Takes Umbrage and Crisp Twenties, by Mark Wahlgren Summers

Cartoon: Sumner Gives the Lord Another Chance, by Mark Wahlgren Summers

On Thursdays over the coming weeks, we will feature a new cartoon—hand drawn by Summers—that offers a creative, satirical spin on Reconstruction history. Each cartoon is accompanied by brief commentary from the author/illustrator to help put things into context. These cartoons stimulate your brain, tickle your funny bone, and bring history to life in a whole new way. Next up in the satirical scaffold: a depiction of the Senator of Massachusetts, Charles Sumner. Continue Reading Cartoon: Sumner Gives the Lord Another Chance, by Mark Wahlgren Summers

Cartoon: Not Everyone Loves a Parade, by Mark Wahlgren Summers

Louisiana’s first Republican governor, the flamboyant Henry Clay Warmoth was unable to rein in a free-spending legislature, one of the most corrupt anywhere south of New York. Not all the spending was stealing; money to aid railroad construction and special privileges given to northern corporations that might link New Orleans with Mobile, Texas, and the North could have freed the Pelican State from the cash-crop economy, in which freedpeople’s opportunities were limited—if it had worked. Continue Reading Cartoon: Not Everyone Loves a Parade, by Mark Wahlgren Summers

Cartoon: We’re looking for people who like to steal, by Mark Wahlgren Summers

On Thursdays over the coming weeks, we will feature a new cartoon—hand drawn by Summers—that offers a creative, satirical spin on Reconstruction history. Each cartoon is accompanied by brief commentary from the author/illustrator to help put things into context. These cartoons stimulate your brain, tickle your funny bone, and bring history to life in a whole new way. First up in the satirical scaffold today: corrupt politicians and the businessmen who love (to bribe) them. Continue Reading Cartoon: We’re looking for people who like to steal, by Mark Wahlgren Summers