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Johnny Smith

@johnnysmith135.bsky.social
205 followers 257 following 55 posts

United States Historian, Professor, Author. Next book: THE FIGHT OF HIS LIFE: JOE LOUIS’S BATTLE FOR FREEDOM DURING WORLD WAR II (written with Randy Roberts)

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Danny Funt @dannyfunt.bsky.social · 19/01/2026
Incredible feeling to be listening to @npr.org while driving my son to daycare and hear my interview with @amartinezla.bsky.social about "EVERYBODY LOSES: The Tumultuous Rise of American Sports Gambling," out tomorrow! Here's a link if you're interested: www.npr.org/2026/01/19/n...
npr.org
'Everybody Loses' chronicles the rise of America's sports betting boom
NPR's A Martinez speaks with journalist and author Danny Funt about his new book, "Everybody Loses: The Tumultuous Rise of American Sports Gambling."
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Luke Epplin @lukeepplin.bsky.social · 16/01/2026
Folks, “Moses and the Doctor” has finally arrived.
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Chris Murphy @chrismurphyct.bsky.social · 14/01/2026
I want to talk about a dystopian world we are entering - where every moment, event, and crisis just become commodities. Life stops being something we live, but something we sell and trade. It will breed both corruption & emptiness. 1/ A 🧵on why our politics can't ignore this.
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Public Books @publicbooks.bsky.social · 22/12/2025
Our 2025 Editors’ Picks are here! Lit in Translation & Sports co-editor @becquer.bsky.social recommends Luis Martín-Santos's "Time of Silence" (trans. Peter Bush) & @johnnysmith135.bsky.social & Randy Roberts's "The Fight of His Life."
publicbooks.org
Public Picks 2025 - Public Books
What were the books of 2025 that dazzled, challenged, and inspired us?
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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 09/09/2025
Exactly right. The book was released because Democrats on the House Oversight Committee kept up the pressure on Jim Comer and forced a subpoena. Even in the minority, congressional Democrats can still make an impact.
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Mallory McMorrow @mallorymcmorrow.bsky.social · 07/09/2025
You deserve a break on Sundays that doesn’t break the bank.
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King Algamemnon @adamrothman.bsky.social · 06/09/2025
Live footage of historians these days
media.tenor.com
a man is playing a game of frog dog at a carnival
Alt: a man playing Whac-A-Mole
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Ron Filipkowski @ronfilipkowski.bsky.social · 31/08/2025
It seems to me one of the best arguments to the court is that if this is truly a national emergency, the president’s own party controls Congress but has done nothing to address it with legislation, so how can it possibly be an emergency?
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derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · 31/08/2025
my bluesky
A dedication page to a book. The page says "To my family. Please don't read this."
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Barack Obama @barackobama.bsky.social · 28/08/2025
This interview, which is also available to listen to as a podcast, provides a useful overview of some of the dangerous trends we’ve been seeing in recent months regarding federalization and militarization of state and local police functions.
nytimes.com
Opinion | Trump Is Building His Own Paramilitary Force
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mikenietzel.bsky.social @mikenietzel.bsky.social · 28/08/2025
Peyton Manning for the academic win. #AcademicSky #HigherEd www.forbes.com/sites/michae...
forbes.com
Peyton Manning Gives Alma Mater More Than $4 Million To Honor Mentors
Peyton Manning has given over $4 million to his alma mater, the University of Tennessee, to establish endowed chairs in honor of two of his academic mentors.
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Timothy J Lombardo @timothyjlombardo.bsky.social · 21/08/2025
This is the headline I show my students when we talk about Alabama adopting its current state constitution in 1901. I teach in Alabama
Headline of the Montgomery Advertiser in 1901: "Citizens of Alabama Declare For White Supremacy and Purity of the Ballot"
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Alex Ip 葉清霖 @alexip718.com · 20/08/2025
The History of Sports in America course I took at Georgia Tech with @johnnysmith135.bsky.social is so foundational to my work now, even I'm in the environmental journalism space. These odd courses are where students are really pushed beyond their comfort zones intellectually without them knowing it
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Laura Burkhardt @lauraannstl.bsky.social · 14/08/2025
“Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you.”
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Adam Keiper @adamkeiper.com · 09/01/2025
I like this concise explanation for how Germany fell into line behind the Nazis, written by a journalist in 1939 and quoted in Richard J. Evans's 'The Coming of the Third Reich' (2003). (2/6)
A passage from 'The Coming of the Third Reich'A passage from 'The Coming of the Third Reich'
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Kara N. Slade @karanslade.bsky.social · 15/08/2025
I didn’t know until now that in the original Rosie the Riveter painting, she is crushing a copy of Mein Kampf under her foot. Happy feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary, remembering all the women who crush the serpents of Satan under their heel.
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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 09/08/2025
New in PN: The sordid origin of 'America First,' explained by a historian “Mainstream opinion in the '30s wasn't pro-Nazi but it wasn't anti-Nazi in any meaningful way either. People would say, ‘Germany for the Germans — what’s offensive about that?’ Nationalism has a certain accepted sensibility."
publicnotice.co
The sordid origin of 'America First,' explained by a historian
"They were not keen on fighting Nazis."
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Johnny Smith @johnnysmith135.bsky.social · 07/08/2025
@pablo.show Pablo, I thoroughly enjoyed the Jesse Owens episode. Question: can you please follow me back so I can send you a DM or email me at jsmith427@gatech.edu?
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Prof Lou Moore @profloumoore.bsky.social · 05/08/2025
This is awful
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George Conway ⚖️🇺🇸 @gtconway.bsky.social · 03/08/2025
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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 07/06/2025
Every future imagined by a tech company is worse than the previous iteration.
OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, has a plan to overhaul college education — by embedding its artificial intelligence tools in every facet of campus life.
If the company’s strategy succeeds, universities would give students A.I. assistants to help guide and tutor them from orientation day through graduation. Professors would provide customized A.I. study bots for each class. Career services would offer recruiter chatbots for students to practice job interviews. And undergrads could turn on a chatbot’s voice mode to be quizzed aloud ahead of a test.
OpenAI dubs its sales pitch “A.I.-native universities.”
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T.J. Stiles @tj-stiles.bsky.social · 01/08/2025
Gee. What will he do with election results he doesn’t like?
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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 28/07/2025
“‘This is an unprecedented situation where hundreds of detainees are held incommunicado, with no ability to access the courts, under legal authority that has never been explained and may not exist,’ they argued.” www.miamiherald.com/news/local/i...
miamiherald.com
Lawyers question legality of Alligator Alcatraz, ask federal judge to intervene
“This is an unprecedented situation where hundreds of detainees are held incommunicado, with no ability to access the courts, under legal authority that has never been explained and may not exist,” pl...
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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 28/07/2025
The common thread across these bills is to disempower faculty, staff and students who live on campus and subject them to the whims of politicians pen.org/with-a-wave-...
pen.org
Wave of New State Bills in 2025 Cast a Web of Control over Higher Education
Lawmakers have passed a stunning wave of educational gag orders that directly censor higher ed teaching, as well as laws that target tenure and traditional faculty governance, intervene in how academi...
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Paul Putz @paulputz.bsky.social · 15/07/2025
In my view @johnnysmith135.bsky.social is one of the best sports historians in the game. If he writes something, I'm going to read it. I just pre-ordered his latest, co-authored with Randy Roberts, and can't wait to check it out. www.amazon.com/Fight-His-Li...
amazon.com
The Fight of His Life: Joe Louis’s Battle for Freedom During World War II
Amazon.com: The Fight of His Life: Joe Louis’s Battle for Freedom During World War II: 9781541605060: Roberts, Randy, Smith, Johnny: Books
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Jonathan V. Last @jvl.bsky.social · 01/07/2025
Don't worry. They're going to take care of Cletus and make sure his rural hospital doesn't go belly-up when Medicaid money dries up. But for um, more "urban" Medicaid populations? lol
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Nancy Levine Stearns @nancylevinestearns.bsky.social · 01/07/2025
🚨 NEWS: Stephen Miller's group has filed a federal civil rights complaint against the Los Angeles Dodgers and their principal owner Guggenheim Partners accusing them of engaging in "unlawful discrimination under the guise of 'diversity, equity, and inclusion' (DEI)."
Jackie Robinson Dodgers
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News Eye @newseye.bsky.social · 01/07/2025
Rarely has MAGA policy been so clearly articulated. Denying sick Americans healthcare doesn’t matter as long as their masked, racist security force gets funding - By Order of the Vice President.
A post by JD Vance . It says:

Everything else—the CBO score, the proper baseline, the minutiae of the Medicaid policy—is immaterial compared to the ICE money and immigration enforcement provisions.
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Larry Glickman @larryglickman.bsky.social · 01/07/2025
Decimating the pursuit and dissemination of knowledge in critical areas at one of the great and unique public university systems for purely ideological reasons will surely go down as one of the great disasters in the history of higher education in the United States.
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Trevon Logan @trevondlogan.bsky.social · 29/06/2025
I desperately wish the media paid more attention to this heinous act of political violence in my home state of Minnesota.
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Tim O’Brien @timobrien.bsky.social · 01/07/2025
“For a country supposedly locked in an existential competition with China, it is bizarre to eviscerate the fastest growing source of energy supposedly to save money while simultaneously providing tax breaks to, of all things, metallurgical coal miners.” www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...
bloomberg.com
The GOP Tax Bill Will Destabilize Tomorrow's Power Grid
The intensified attack on wind and solar power threatens capacity at a time when AI demand for electricity is surging.
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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 01/07/2025
We are disinvesting in science, and education, but there is always money for MAGA worship
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Dare Obasanjo @carnage4life.bsky.social · 01/07/2025
A new paper in The Lancet, one of the world’s foremost peer reviewed medical journals, estimates that USAID prevented 91 million deaths across 133 countries over 20 years. The paper estimates that Elon Musk’s DOGE funding cuts to USAID will lead to 14 million deaths by 2030 (4.5 million children).
thelancet.com
Evaluating the impact of two decades of USAID interventions and projecting the effects of defunding on mortality up to 2030: a retrospective impact evaluation and forecasting analysis
USAID funding has significantly contributed to the reduction in adult and child mortality across low-income and middle-income countries over the past two decades. Our estimates show that, unless the a...
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Simon Rosenberg @simonwdc.bsky.social · 01/07/2025
Thread.....
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Jacob Soboroff @jacobsoboroff.bsky.social · 30/06/2025
I obtained this from a community member minutes after arriving on scene following a raid at the Cypress Park Home Depot this morning. they detained day laborers.
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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 30/06/2025
Torres: "In 2024, 90% of new electricity generation in the US was clean energy. 60% of it is solar. And Republicans are proposing to defund solar and battery storage and wind, which are the leading sources of new electricity generations in the US. It is an act of strategic self-sabotage."
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Jay Rosen @jayrosen.bsky.social · 29/06/2025
Timothy Snyder with some compressed truth about truth. www.facebook.com/thedailyshow... via @mariopro.bsky.social When Step 1 becomes a commonplace, journalism and its practices are in peril. We crossed into that world well before the 2024 election, but it was hard to get journalists to see it.
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Jess Calarco @jessicacalarco.com · 29/06/2025
Teachers don't need more tech. They need smaller classes and more (paid) time for prep and instruction. But alas, the tech option means more profit for billionaires, while the latter would cost billionaires more in taxes. And so, in our current kleptocracy, tech is what teachers are going to get...
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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 28/06/2025
Jan 6 prosecutors were fired because they upheld rule of law, securing convictions in court with beyond-a-reasonable-doubt proof of crimes against America, and that’s not the job anymore.
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Christopher Webb @cwebbonline.com · 28/06/2025
Spot on. This is the clearest explanation I’ve seen. It ‘s relatable, and humanizes the issue in a way everyone can understand.
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T.J. Stiles @tj-stiles.bsky.social · 27/06/2025
I dissent.
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ElieNYC @elienyc.bsky.social · 27/06/2025
"The rule of law is not a given in this Nation, nor any other. It is a precept of our democracy that will endure only if those brave enough in every branch fight for its survival. Today, the Court abdicates its vital role in that effort." -- Sotomayor dissent
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Jonathan Cohn @jonathancohn.bsky.social · 27/06/2025
“This is likely the largest child abduction in war since world war two – comparable to the Germanification of Polish children by the Nazis.” www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...
theguardian.com
‘Basically impossible to get them back’: Russia’s mass abduction of Ukrainian children is a war crime, say experts
As territories shift and divide families, desperate parents are travelling to Russia to find their children, many of whom have been moved into military camps or orphanages
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Chris Murphy @chrismurphyct.bsky.social · 24/06/2025
How do they get away with this? The bill they passed cuts Medicaid by $793 BILLION. $793 BILLION. It's in the bill. They wrote it. Their own budget office says 10 million people will lose Medicaid coverage. Just wild.
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Senator Patty Murray @murray.senate.gov · 26/06/2025
I'm going to try and communicate with my Republican colleagues in a new way.
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Inside Higher Ed @insidehighered.com · 26/06/2025
DeSantis Announces Launch of New Accreditor Florida governor announced the state is launching its own accrediting body. Other states involved in the effort are Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas. #HigherEd #EDUSky #AcademicSky bit.ly/4k8PL8s
bit.ly
DeSantis Announces Launch of New Accreditor
Florida governor announced the state is launching its own accrediting body. Other states involved in the effort are Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas.
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