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January 28, 2020
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Nancy Isenberg

Nancy Isenberg is the author of several books, including White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America and Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr. She is the T. Harry Williams Professor of American History at Louisiana State University.

Two women stand side-by-side in front of a stand of trees. The woman on the left is dressed in a light-colored coat., while the one on the right wears black.

Southern Secrets 

Three very different women haunted by the past

by Nancy Isenberg | Monday, June 03, 2019
Waking From the Dream

Waking From the Dream

Most Americans assume society is more egalitarian than it is

by Nancy Isenberg | Monday, June 05, 2017
Smarty Pants Podcast

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THIS WEEK’S ARCHIVE PICK

2nd Look

Shock Waves

by Our Editors

In the wake of Iranian airstrikes on Al Asad Air Base, the Defense Department is examining service members for traumatic stress injuries. President Trump this week dismissed the soldiers’ possible concussion symptoms as “headaches,” adding that he doesn’t “consider them very serious injuries, relative to other injuries that I’ve seen.” But as Bethany Vaccaro discovered after her brother Robert left for Iraq in 2006, “giving one’s life can come in more than one form.” Her essay in our summer 2009 issue explores the aftermath of Robert’s traumatic brain injury, both for him and for their family, after an explosive detonated outside his Army Humvee. His injury “defines our daily existence,” writes Vaccaro. “The ongoing process of rehabilitation … has tenaciously enmeshed each one of us, altering our plans, our family structure and interactions, our ideas about life and sacrifice, and most resolutely our belief that if he would only make it back home, everything would be okay.”