This special issue of the Journal of American History, “Through the Eye of Katrina: The Past as Prologue?” provides a compelling first take on the history surrounding the disaster of Hurricane Katrina and its impact on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.

Our current installment of "Teaching the JAH" features Allen Guelzo's article, "Houses Divided: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Political Landscape of 1858."

The "Teaching the JAH" project creates online "teaching packages" that demonstrate how new JAH articles might be used in teaching U.S. history. Each package includes a targeted article, brief comments from the article's author, and a set of annotated documents intended for classroom use. Depending on the targeted articles, the document sets might include illustrations, photographs, video clips, audio clips, and excerpts from other primary historical texts. The packages also include links to other history-related Web sites with additional relevant materials.

This special supplement allows readers to consult the full text of "Textbooks and Teaching" articles, syllabi for the U.S. history survey course, and other supplementary material developed by participants in the "Textbooks and Teaching" section published each year in the March issue.

To explore and rethink connections between history and the nation-state, the Journal of American History developed a special issue (September 1999) that centered on Mexico and the United States. While words convey part of the story, we concluded that pictures also evoke the issues very well—and differently. And so we created picture galleries to illustrate conflicts and meanings generated by the border itself; activities the Mexican government has created in its Mexican Communities Abroad program to win and retain allegiance from its migrants; and crucial events that have led to this crisis in Mexico.

The Journal of American History's round table on translations of the Declaration of Independence was a natural candidate for online publication. Although the print journal was able to devote a substantial number of pages in the March 1999 issue to the round table, it could not include the many versions of the Declaration of Independence, as it has been translated into different languages and at different times. On the Web, we are able to include this richer documentation. Where possible, moreover, we have also included "naïve" retranslations back into English so that those who do not know the different languages can get a sense of how some key concepts and words have been rendered.