Current History

• 1. Introduction

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  Current History began its life on the 12th of December 1914 as The New York Times Current History of the European War. The world was several months into a conflict that would reshape every border and government in Europe, and an American audience was hungry for something more than daily dispatches. George Washington Ochs Oakes, the brother of New York Times publisher Adolph Ochs, had a particular answer: a magazine that would record, as he put it, "history in the making." More than a century later, that magazine is still publishing. It holds the distinction of being the oldest continuously operating United States-based publication devoted exclusively to contemporary world affairs. How did a magazine born to cover a single catastrophic war survive long enough to become a permanent fixture of international journalism? And what happened along the way when its ownership briefly entangled it in an international espionage scandal?

• 2. War as an Origin Story

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  George Washington Ochs Oakes made a decision shortly after the magazine launched that would shape its character for decades. A publication recording current events in real time, he reasoned, should draw on the expertise of working historians and social scientists, not just journalists. To build that initial network of contributors, he turned to Albert Bushnell Hart, a historian at Harvard University, to help organize the journal's first group of contributing editors.

  The list of early contributors reads like a roll call of the English-speaking intellectual world of the early twentieth century. George Bernard Shaw and Winston Churchill wrote for the magazine alongside American historians Charles A. Beard, Allan Nevins, and Henry Steele Commager. Grover Clark served as its correspondent in Beijing. This combination of public figures, statesmen, and scholarly experts gave Current History a tone that set it apart from straightforward news reporting.

• 3. The Smyth Scandal

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  The New York Times sold Current History in 1936 to editor Merle Tracy, ending more than two decades of company ownership. Three years later, the magazine changed hands again. The new ownership group included a man named Joseph Hilton Smyth, who at the same time acquired other titles including The Living Age and The North American Review.

  Smyth's connection to Current History lasted only through 1939, but his broader activities attracted federal attention. He and two associates were later convicted of acting as agents for the Japanese government without registering with the State Department. That conviction tied the magazine's name to an international scandal in the tense period leading up to the Second World War.

  Current History addressed the episode directly in its October 1942 issue. The magazine's position was clear: during the months that Smyth held an ownership interest in the publication, he had not controlled its editorial policies. By that point, the magazine had already passed into other hands. Since 1942, it has been owned by members of the Redmond family, with Daniel Mark Redmond serving as its current publisher.

• 4. The Regional Issue Model

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  Philadelphia is the home base for a magazine that covers the entire globe. Current History publishes monthly from September through May, producing nine issues each year. Seven of those issues are devoted to specific world regions: China and East Asia, Russia and Eurasia, the Middle East, Latin America, Europe, South Asia, and Africa. One issue each year addresses current global trends, and one takes up a special theme such as climate change or global governance.

  This structure has been the magazine's organizing principle since 1953. Each issue includes a chronology of major international events, and most contain a book review section along with a commentary article. The approach treats each region as a subject with its own cycle of attention, returning to it year after year rather than covering it only when a crisis demands notice.

• 5. Scholars and Practitioners

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  More recent contributors to Current History have included James Schlesinger, Francis Fukuyama, Jeffrey Sachs, and Juan Cole, alongside regional specialists such as Phebe Marr, Marina Ottaway, and Bruce Riedel. The mix of former officials and working academics has remained a defining feature of the contributor list.

  Today the board of contributing editors draws from institutions across the United States and beyond. Scholars affiliated with Stanford University, Harvard University, Brown University, Georgetown University, Yale University, New York University, and the London School of Economics and Political Science are among the contributors. The Council on Foreign Relations, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and the Inter-American Dialogue are also represented. The publication's editor is Joshua Lustig, and the magazine maintains no institutional, political, or governmental affiliation.

  According to the Journal Citation Reports, Current History had a 2014 impact factor of 0.127. That figure ranked it 149th out of 161 journals in the Political Science category and 82nd out of 85 in International Relations, a standing that reflects the magazine's identity as a practitioner-facing publication rather than a venue for peer-reviewed academic research.