''Current History'' is the oldest extant

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

-based publication devoted exclusively to contemporary

world affairs ''World Affairs'' is an American quarterly journal covering international relations. At one time, it was an official publication of the American Peace Society. The magazine has been published since 1837 and was re-launched in January 2008 as a ne ...

. The magazine was founded in 1914 by George Washington Ochs Oakes, brother of ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' publisher

Adolph Ochs Adolph Simon Ochs (March 12, 1858 – April 8, 1935) was an American newspaper publisher and former owner of ''The New York Times'' and ''The Chattanooga Times'' (now the '' Chattanooga Times Free Press''). Early life and career Ochs was born ...

, in order to provide detailed coverage of

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

. ''Current History'' was published by

the New York Times Company The New York Times Company is an American mass media company that publishes ''The New York Times''. Its headquarters are in Manhattan, New York City. History The company was founded by Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones in New York City. ...

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 Global governance refers to institutions that coordinate the behavior of transnational actors, facilitate cooperation, resolve disputes, and alleviate collective action problems. Global governance broadly entails making, monitoring, and enfor ...

. 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 George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from ...

Winston Churchill Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 during the Second World War, and again from ...

Charles A. Beard Charles Austin Beard (1874–1948) was an American historian and professor, who wrote primarily during the first half of the 20th century. A history professor at Columbia University, Beard's influence is primarily due to his publications in the f ...

Allan Nevins Joseph Allan Nevins (May 20, 1890 – March 5, 1971) was an American historian and journalist, known for his extensive work on the history of the Civil War and his biographies of such figures as Grover Cleveland, Hamilton Fish, Henry Ford, and J ...

, and Henry Steele Commager. Grover Clark was its Beijing correspondent. More recently, the journal has featured authors such as

James Schlesinger James Rodney Schlesinger (February 15, 1929 – March 27, 2014) was an American economist and public servant who was best known for serving as Secretary of Defense from 1973 to 1975 under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. Prior to ...

Francis Fukuyama Francis Yoshihiro Fukuyama (; born October 27, 1952) is an American political scientist, political economist, international relations scholar and writer. Fukuyama is known for his book ''The End of History and the Last Man'' (1992), which argue ...

Jeffrey Sachs Jeffrey David Sachs () (born 5 November 1954) is an American economist, academic, public policy analyst, and former director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University, where he holds the title of University Professor. He is known for his work ...

Bruce Riedel Bruce O. Riedel (born 1953) is an American expert on U.S. security, South Asia, and counter-terrorism. He is currently a senior fellow in the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, and a professor at Johns Hopkins School ...

Leslie H. Gelb Leslie Howard "Les" Gelb (March 4, 1937 – August 31, 2019) was an American academic, correspondent and columnist for ''The New York Times'' who served as a senior Defense and State Department official and later the President Emeritus of the Coun ...

Bruce Russett Bruce Martin Russett (born 1935) is Dean Acheson Professor of Political Science and Professor in International and Area Studies, MacMillan Center, Yale University, and edited the ''Journal of Conflict Resolution'' from 1972 to 2009. Academic car ...

, Elizabeth Economy, Charles Kupchan, Ivo Daalder, Joseph Cirincione,

Phebe Marr Phebe Marr (born September 21, 1931) is a prominent American historian of modern Iraq with the Middle East Institute. She has been research professor at the National Defense University and a retired professor of history at University of Tennesse ...

, 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 Albert Bushnell Hart (July 1, 1854 – July 16, 1943) was an American historian, writer, and editor based at Harvard University. One of the first generation of professionally trained historians in the United States, a prolific author and editor ...

, in organizing the journal’s initial group of contributing editors. ''Current History''s board of contributing editors today includes

Catherine Boone Catherine Boone is Professor of Comparative Politics at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Boone is a specialist in property rights, political economy, and territorial politics in Africa. Education Boone earned her B.A. at t ...

(The London School of Economics and Political Science);

Bruce Cumings Bruce Cumings (born September 5, 1943) is an American historian of East Asia, professor, lecturer and author. He is the Gustavus F. and Ann M. Swift Distinguished Service Professor in History, and the former chair of the history department at ...

(University of Chicago); Deborah Davis (Yale University); David B. H. Denoon (New York University); Larry Diamond (Stanford University); Michele Dunne (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace);

Barry Eichengreen Barry Julian Eichengreen (born 1952) is an American economist and economic historian who holds the title of George C. Pardee and Helen N. Pardee Professor of Economics and Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, where he ha ...

(University of California, Berkeley); C. Christine Fair (Georgetown University); Sumit Ganguly (Indiana University);

Marshall Goldman Marshall Irwin Goldman (July 26, 1930 – August 2, 2017) was an American economist and writer. He was an expert on the economy of the former Soviet Union. Goldman was a professor of economics at Wellesley College and associate director of the Har ...

(Wellesley College);

G. John Ikenberry Gilford John Ikenberry (October 5, 1954) is a theorist of international relations and United States foreign policy, and the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. He is known for his work on li ...

(Princeton University); Michael T. Klare (Hampshire College); Joshua Kurlantzick (Council on Foreign Relations); Michael McFaul (Stanford University, currently on leave);

Rajan Menon Rajan Menon (born 1953) is a political scientist Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of political activities, political thought, poli ...

(Lehigh University);

Augustus Richard Norton Augustus Richard Norton (September 2, 1946 – February 20, 2019) was an American professor and army officer. He was a professor of international relations and anthropology at the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University. He was ...

(Boston University);

Joseph Nye Joseph Samuel Nye Jr. (born January 19, 1937) is an American political scientist. He and Robert Keohane co-founded the international relations theory of neoliberalism, which they developed in their 1977 book ''Power and Interdependence''. Togethe ...

(Harvard University);

Michael Shifter Michael E. Shifter is president of the Inter-American Dialogue and an adjunct professor of Latin American studies at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and writes for the council ...

(Inter-American Dialogue);

Arturo Valenzuela Arturo A. Valenzuela (born 23 January 1944) is a Chilean-American academic who was the United States Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs from November 5, 2009, until August 2011. His confirmation had been blocked by Senat ...

(Georgetown University, currently on leave); and Jeffrey Wasserstrom (University of California, Irvine). The publication's editor is Alan Sorensen. The magazine was linked to an international scandal in the run-up to World War II. ''The New York Times'' had sold ''Current History'' in 1936 to the editor Merle Tracy; in 1939 it was sold again, to an ownership group that included Joseph Hilton Smyth, who also acquired such magazines as ''The Living Age'' and ''

The North American Review The ''North American Review'' (NAR) was the first literary magazine in the United States. It was founded in Boston in 1815 by journalist Nathan Hale and others. It was published continuously until 1940, after which it was inactive until revived at ...

''. Smyth's association with ''Current History'' ended the same year, but he and two associates, in connection with their publishing activities, were later convicted of acting as agents for the Japanese government without registering with the State Department. ''Current History'' addressed this episode in its October 1942 issue, maintaining that Smyth during the months that he held an ownership interest in the publication did not control editorial policies."''Current History'', October 1942, pp. 137–138. According to the ''

Journal Citation Reports ''Journal Citation Reports'' (''JCR'') is an annual publicationby Clarivate Analytics (previously the intellectual property of Thomson Reuters). It has been integrated with the Web of Science and is accessed from the Web of Science-Core Colle ...

'', the journal has a 2014

impact factor The impact factor (IF) or journal impact factor (JIF) of an academic journal is a scientometric index calculated by Clarivate that reflects the yearly mean number of citations of articles published in the last two years in a given journal, as ...

of 0.127, ranking it 149th out of 161 journals in the category "Political Science" and 82nd out of 85 journals in the category "International Relations".

References

External links

''Current History's'' website

''Current History''
at the

HathiTrust HathiTrust Digital Library is a large-scale collaborative repository of digital content from research libraries including content digitized via Google Books and the Internet Archive digitization initiatives, as well as content digitized locall ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Current History English-language journals International relations journals Publications established in 1914 Mass media in Philadelphia 9 times per year journals