Scott Stern Journalist Profile

Articles

The Tragedy of Ryan White

Nov 29, 2024 | newrepublic.com | Scott Stern

A decade ago, in a graduate seminar on “problems” in the history of medicine, my classmates and I began noticing something we came to call “the AIDS epilogue.” A great many books by historians of public health and medicine, it seemed, ended by invoking a condition that had not previously received much focus in their pages: HIV/AIDS.
The Tragedy of Ryan White

Nov 29, 2024 | yahoo.com | Scott Stern

A decade ago, in a graduate seminar on “problems” in the history of medicine, my classmates and I began noticing something we came to call “the AIDS epilogue.” A great many books by historians of public health and medicine, it seemed, ended by invoking a condition that had not previously received much focus in their pages: HIV/AIDS.
THERE IS A DEEP BROODING IN ARKANSAS

Oct 26, 2024 | kirkusreviews.com | Scott Stern |David Grann |Elie Wiesel |Marion Wiesel

A welcome study of racial justice and injustice. A historical examination of rape trials in the Mississippi Delta during Jim Crow, with Maya Angelou as an important witness. “The very first reported case heard in the Territory of Arkansas was a rape case,” writes legal historian Stern.
Searching for the Elusive Man Who Inspired Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Oct 24, 2024 | newrepublic.com | Scott Stern

One evening in December 1850, an escaped slave named John Andrew Jackson arrived at a handsome, white clapboard house in Brunswick, Maine, cold and desperate for somewhere to stay. He was fleeing north to Canada, striving to evade the slave-catchers who had just been empowered by a new law, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, to capture runaways even in free states like Maine.
Searching for the Elusive Man Who Inspired Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Oct 24, 2024 | yahoo.com | Scott Stern

One evening in December 1850, an escaped slave named John Andrew Jackson arrived at a handsome, white clapboard house in Brunswick, Maine, cold and desperate for somewhere to stay. He was fleeing north to Canada, striving to evade the slave-catchers who had just been empowered by a new law, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, to capture runaways even in free states like Maine.
Forced Prison Labor Is on the Ballot

Oct 22, 2024 | jacobin.com | Scott Stern

For millions of Americans, slavery is on the ballot this Election Day. To many, this fact may be surprising. After all, chattel slavery famously ended over a century and a half ago, with the Union’s victory in the Civil War.
The Women She Left Behind | Scott W. Stern

Sep 18, 2024 | nybooks.com | Scott Stern

Eleanor Roosevelt’s tacit support for a program that jailed sex workers suggests the limits of the elite-led reform efforts she championed.
How California almost banned gas cars 50 years ago

Sep 3, 2024 | corporateknights.com | Scott Stern

Nicholas Petris, born to Greek immigrants in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1923, could remember a time when electric trucks were a common sight on the streets of Oakland. In fact, just a couple decades before his birth, both electric and steam-powered vehicles — which were cleaner and more powerful, respectively, than early gas-powered cars — constituted far larger shares of the American car market than combustion vehicles.
That time a California lawmaker tried getting rid of gas-powered vehicles

Sep 2, 2024 | motherjones.com | Scott Stern

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Nicholas Petris, born to Greek immigrants in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1923, could remember a time when electric trucks were a common sight on the streets of Oakland.
The Forgotten Struggle To Ban Gas-Powered Cars in the 1960s

Aug 30, 2024 | truthdig.com | Scott Stern

This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here. Nicholas Petris, born to Greek immigrants in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1923, could remember a time when electric trucks were a common sight on the streets of Oakland.