Akim Reinhardt is a professor of History at Towson University in Maryland. Born and raised in the Bronx, he has also lived in Michigan, Nebraska, and Arizona. He currently resides in a Baltimore row home that he shares with one skinny, old mean cat and one fluffy, young sweet cat. He is the author of several books and blogs regularly at ThePublicProfessor.com. Email: yankeeslim [at] gmail.com
by Megan Golden and Akim Reinhardt One time he showed up at the lake, having driven two hours straight from the city, climbed up to a massive rock wearing only his green speedo, took a last sip of vodka, and executed a perfect swan dive from thirty feet. One time he sewed the head back…
by Akim Reinhardt Roger Moore died last week at the age of 89. He is the first important Bond to pass (sorry David Niven!), so predictably heated arguments ensued: Where does Moore rank in the canon of Bond actors? It was a boring debate. Moore was the worst, plain and simple. He helped drive the…
by Akim Reinhardt Last week, Barack Obama got beaten up on social media and called out by the press for accepting a $400,000 speaking fee from a Wall Street investment firm. It was the day's major kerfuffle, the non-Trump story of the week, and reactions to it by many of my smart, well reasoned friends…
by Akim Reinhardt Donald Trump's first hundred days as president are nearly tallied. Enough time has passed that we can now divide people who voted for him into two groups: 1. Those who: never liked Trump (but made a calculated decision to vote for him); have more recently developed doubts; or will soon become disillusioned…
by Akim Reinhardt Donald Trump is going down. His house of cards will collapse at some point. The leaks will keep flowing and eventually his position will become untenable. Conflicts of interest. Connections to Russia. All of it will become too great a weight to carry, especially since The Donald has very few genuine allies…
by Akim Reinhardt I have a friend of Indian descent who was born in Africa, but raised almost entirely in London. Or, I should say, I had such a friend. About a year ago, maybe more, we got into an online argument about the Pope, and that was that. Much to my surprise, he de-friended…
by Akim Reinhardt I've been writing 3QD Monday columns for over six years now. Never missed a deadline. Not a one of ‘em. Every fourth Monday: Bang! 2,000 words. More like 2,500. I enjoy it. I look forward to it. Each December, when the city of Baltimore mails every resident a Baltimore City Department of…
by Akim Reinhardt The United States boasts a deeply conservative economic tradition. From its origins as a colonial, agricultural society, it quickly emerged as a slave holding republic built on the ethnic cleansing and occasional genocide of Indigenous peoples. After the Civil War (1861-65), it reshaped itself in the crucible of unfettered laissez-faire capitalism straight…
by Akim Reinhardt Maybe one day I'll publish the 2,500 word screed I wrote for this website about how fucking sick I am of white people. And not just the racist, sexist ass holes who eagerly voted for a racist, sexist ass hole flaunting racism and sexism as a central part of his campaign; or…
by Akim Reinhardt To say this has been an interesting presidential election season would be an understatement. Regardless of who is declared president after the polls close three weeks from tomorrow, this is almost certainly a tussle that historians will pick over and analyze for decades to come, if not centuries. They're apt to do…
Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Ronald Reagan, Clintonista, Trumpatista, Wile E. Coyote and Roadrunner, Jesus, John Kasich, Old man George Bush, Democrats, Republicans, James Garfield, Chester Arthur, Ali-Frazier, Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, Samuel Tilden, Rutherford Hayes, Abraham Lincoln, The People’s Party, William Jennings Bryan, William McKinley, Herbert Hoover, Al Smith, Franklin Roosevelt, The New Deal, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Colin Powell, Fortune Magazine, Dwight Eisenhower
by Akim Reinhardt During your 20s and 30s, when you don't have any children, it is inevitable that people will periodically ask you: “Do you want to have kids?” It never mattered who asked. Family, friends, or lesser acquaintances, men or women, married or single, parents themselves or not. I always had the same answer.…
by Akim Reinhardt Much has been made of the fact that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are the two most loathed presidential candidates since the birth of polling. Each of them has managed to alienate roughly half the country. About a quarter of Americans despise both of them. They make Barry Goldwater, Michael Dukakis, and…
by Akim Reinhardt Hello. My name is Akim Reinhardt, I was very, very wrong, and now it's time for me to pay for my mistakes. The good news is, when I pay, you just might be the one to collect. My loss can be your windfall. The catch? You'll have to publicly debase yourself almost…
by Akim Reinhardt Hotter. I need it to be hotter. I'm sitting in the backyard of my sister's carriage house apartment in Orange, California, a circle of jolly boutique and micro brew quaintness amid the sprawling shit hole that is Orange Country. Of course nowadays, most any place in America afflicted by people is a…
by Akim Reinhardt David Bowie was a white Englishman. Prince was a black American. Bowie was deeply rooted in the riffs, major/minor chords, and melody of rock-n-roll. Prince was grounded in the syncopated rhythms and arrangements of funk and R&B. Prince's and Bowie's careers did overlap to a degree. Their biggest selling albums, Bowie's Let's…
by Akim Reinhardt You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time. For example, some people will always believe that Abraham Lincoln first uttered this famous aphorism, even though there is no record of him ever…
by Akim Reinhardt I wrote my first poem when I was 11 years old. Simple quatrains with an ABCB rhyme scheme, it was a meditation on the 6th grade coming to an end. I enjoyed the work of writing it and was proud of the finished product. Up until that point, whenever an adult had…
by Akim Reinhardt Progressives, moderates, and even many conservatives are aghast at Donald Trump's populist appeal. As this cantankerous oaf flashes ever brighter in the political pan, they fret that his demagoguery might land him the Republican presidential nomination, and perhaps even carry him all the to White House. I'm not worried about the prospect…
by Akim Reinhardt I sat on a friend's living room couch, waiting for her to emerge from her bedroom contraptions. I had arrived at the time and date requested. However, my initial visit to her room had been cut short amid the beeps and whirring of machinery. After some brief exchanges, she began to raise…