Articles – 2023
America’s Surprising Partisan Divide on Life Expectancy; Centuries-old settlement patterns — and the attitudes they spawned about government — are to blame for differences in longevity between red southern states and bluer parts of the country; Politico; FRIDAY READ; 1 September 2023.
Appalachian Trail; In the first half of the 20th century, 8 million poor rural whites fled the border states for Great Lakes cities. Brash and suspicious of government, they played an underappreciated role in the collapse of the New Deal order; Washington Monthly; BOOKS; September/October 2023; pp. 123-125.
Liberty on the Ballot; How Biden’s freedom agenda could win him a second term and save the republic; Washington Monthly; FEATURES; July/August 2023, pp. 13-18.
The Geography of Gun Violence; New data about Americans’ attitudes about firearms and their use underscore how divided we are by region; Washington Monthly (online); POLITICS, 16 June 2023
Exodus to the Pine Tree State; Over continents and years, through danger and illness, thousands of African asylum seekers, mostly from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola, have made their way to Maine. They tell harrowing stories of peril in their home countries and on their way to the United States, and say they came to Maine hearing they would find safety and help here; Maine Sunday Telegram; LONG WAY HOME; 21 May 2023, p. A1
The Surprising Geography of Gun Violence; America’s regions are poles apart when it comes to gun deaths and the cultural and ideological forces that drive them; Politico; INVESTIGATION; 23 April 2023.
Desperately Seeking Union; A new biography of Daniel Webster argues that the antebellum statesman forged a civic nationalist vision that has held America together. If only it were true. Washington Monthly; BOOKS; April/May/June 2023; pp. 59-61.
Midterms: How Rival Regional Cultures Explain Our Sharp Divides; The polarized electorate isn’t blue/red or urban/rural. It’s the colonizing projects of the 17th and 18th centuries; Washington Monthly (online); POLITICS, 23 February 2023
How the Myth of the American Frontier Got Its Start; Frederick Jackson Turner’s thesis informed decades of scholarship and culture. Then he realized he was wrong; Smithsonian Magazine, HISTORY, January/February 2023.
COLIN WOODARD is a New York Times bestselling author and award-winning journalist. He is the author of six books that have been translated into a dozen foreign languages and inspired an NBC television drama. He is currently Director of Nationhood Lab at the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Affairs at Salve Regina University. As State and National Affairs Writer at the Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram he won a 2012 George Polk Award and was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in 2016. He is a contributing editor at POLITICO and his work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Economist, Smithsonian and dozens of other major publications.