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The first AHR Forum, “Truth and Reconciliation in History,” deals with a global experience that both calls history into question and calls upon the participation of historians. Especially since the creation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa in 1995, after the ending of apartheid, a number of nations and groups have attempted to confront and possibly come to terms with their fractious and traumatic pasts. This forum offers several examples of how historians have contributed to these attempts. Elazar Barkan leads off with an introductory essay, “Historians and Historical Reconciliation,” in which he surveys the role that historians have played “to promote reconciliation through collaborative work to produce a shared history.” The three articles that follow offer case studies of this process at work. The Polish‐Jewish experience during World War II is examined by David Engel in “On Reconciling the Histories of Two Chosen Peoples.” In “Truth in Telling: Reconciling Realities in the Genocide of the Ottoman Armenians,” Ronald Grigor Suny delves into initiatives by Turkish, Armenian, and other scholars to reach some common understanding of the ethnic conflicts in the early part of the twentieth century. In “Confronting the Yugoslav Controversies: The Scholars' Initiative,” Charles Ingrao gives an account of the efforts of a range of scholars from the Balkan region and the West who worked together to fashion a single narrative of the crimes and misdeeds committed in the former Yugoslavia. In the concluding comment, “Settling Accounts? An Americanist Perspective on Historical Reconciliation,” James T. Campbell not only reflects on these three cases but also offers a commentary on the reconciliation process from the perspective of someone who has experience with Americans' attempts to deal with their own problematic past. As Barkan notes in his introductory essay, the participation of historians in these kinds of projects is one example of how scholarship—often assumed to be irrelevant to social problems, relegated to the ivory tower—can play a crucial role on the public stage.

The second AHR Forum in this issue looks at a notable achievement in the writing of recent U.S. history, Taylor Branch's trilogy America in the King Years, the final volume of which was published in 2007. Three historians examine Branch's contribution from different perspectives. In “Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Meanings of the 1960s,” Michael Kazin takes an appreciative look at the volumes' interpretation of that turbulent decade, but also offers some criticism of Branch's narrative as analytically inadequate to explain the social and political trends that defined the period. In “The Biography Branch Might Have Written,” Clayborne Carson assesses the work from a biographical perspective, questioning whether Branch provides an accurate understanding of the deep sources of King's actions throughout his life. Finally, Peniel E. Joseph, in “The Black Power Movement, Democracy, and America in the King Years,” focuses on African American militants and radicals, charging that Branch fails to acknowledge adequately the important role played by these figures both in the wider context of American history and in the civil rights movement.

December's issue will include an AHR Forum on “Transnational Perspectives on Sexuality and Gender” and an AHR Conversation on “Historians and the Study of Material Culture.”

With this issue we note several changes on the Board of Editors. Toby L. Ditz, Lloyd S. Kramer, Daniel Lord Smail, Eric Van Young, and Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom are leaving the board, with our thanks for their invaluable service. Their replacements are Jonathan C. Brown, Paul Freedman, Jane Kamensky, Jeremy Popkin, and Ruth Rogaski.