When the World Turned Upside Down is a collection of 66 essays and opinion columns written between 2019 and 2022, a period of momentous-some unimaginable-developments in the United States and across the world. This book stands at the intersection of opinion journalism, history, and chronicling offering a dialogue between past and present (or present and past). They are, to use the often-quoted phrase, first drafts of history.

Foreword - Acknowledgments - Abbreviations - Introduction - Trump, Fake News, and Why History Matters More Than Ever - "All History Is Contemporary": A 20/ 20 Look at the Antebellum and Civil War - Polarization, Nationalism, and Secessionism (Past and Present) - Race and Politics: Contemporary Echoes of the U.S. Antebellum - How Do Lincoln, Kennedy, Obama, and Trump Compare? - I Cannot Believe the Things I Have Been Reading in the Pre- election Media - Statehood for Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico in Historical Perspective - The 2020 U.S. Census: Historical Precedents and What Censuses Tell Us about Populations and Power, Past and Present - Is That a Constitution in Your Pocket? - Democratic Socialism in the United States: Does Bernie Sanders Need Rebranding? - Do the Riots in Minneapolis Forbode Greater Civil Unrest? - Pandemic, Pandemonium, and the November 2020 Elections - June 14- June 20, 2020: Trump's Worst Week to Date? - Election- Eve Carpet Bombings, Scarier- Than- Usual Halloween Costumes, and Other Things We May See Before and on Election Day 2020 - Fifty- Five Hours Binge- Watching the Never- Before- Seen and the Unimaginable (America, January 4-6, 2021) - Happy 2021 Valentine's Day, Mr. Trump - Tucker and the Talking Heads: Anatomy of a Fox News Show Built on Deceit and Demagoguery -"Epic," "Heroic," "Patriots": Words We Have Abused into Meaninglessness - The Diplomacy of Haggling - "Ask Them to Spell Their Names" and Other Real- Life Blunders in Transcultural Communications - Lost in Cultural Translation - The Summer Solstice, Kupalo/ Kupala and St. John the Baptist - The Ajiaco, the Cuban Sandwich, and Other Cuban/ Caribbean Foods for Thought - Barbados: The Caribbean's First Slavery- and- Sugar Plantation Complex and World's Newest Republic - Puerto Rico: The Holiday Island with the Longest Christmas Season - A Russian Soldier Put a Bullet Through the Poet's Head - The Schoolboy's Old, Red English Atlas - My Offshore Library: University of Puerto Rico, 1978-1985 - The Seven Deadly Sins of the Modern American University - Diverse Pathways in Education and Life: Seven Real- Life Stories - The Epidemic That Will Outlive the COVID-19 Pandemic, the Spiraling Mental Health Crisis Among Our College Students -An Almost Dangerous Occupation? Teaching History in Florida's Public Schools and State Universities - Rethinking Columbus and 1492 in and out of the Classroom - Would You Like to Have Coffee with the Author? - I Saw My Entire Life Flash Before My Eyes - Hispanic? Latino? Latinx? What's Nextx? - Hispanic Heritage Month 2020: Some Advice from the Trenches - Latinos in Florida's 2020 Election - A Second Opinion: The Democratic Party Needs a Battery of Tests and Biopsies to Figure Out Why Its Support among Latino Voters Slipped in 2020 - Crisis in Paradise - Puerto Rico's Democratic Revolt Result of Decades of Mounting Tectonic Pressure - Puerto Rico, Its Expanding Diaspora and the 2020 Elections - The 20 Plagues of Contemporary Puerto Rico - Can't We Just Sell Multi- Plagued Puerto Rico and Solve the Political Status of the World's Oldest Colony? - Should We Get Married or Continue Living Together? Puerto Rico's Never- Ending Status Question - "My Good Friend Roosevelt": Fidel Castro to FDR, November 6, 1940 - Unsolicited Advice for Bernie Sanders: Stay Away from the Cuba Trap - "Are We Not Your Fellow Artists?": The Solitude of Cuba's San Isidro Movement - A Tale of Two Other Cities: Rising Authoritarianism out of Washington, D.C., and Havana - An Honest Response to a Colleague's Views on Cuba and U.S. Policy Toward That "Immiserated" Island - The Shattered Mirror: Democracy and Anti- Democracy on Both Sides of the Florida Straits, 2021 - Sixtieth Anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis Finds Communist Island in Deepest Crisis Ever - What History Tells Us About COVID-19's Future Impact - 1989, History's Stubborn Twists and the Commencement Speaker Who Warned Us to Remain Vigilant - The Right, the Left and Everything at the Other End - The Strange Etymologies of "the Left," "Liberals," and "Progressives" - Wars and Rumors of Wars in Times of TikTok: Is America Ready for a Major Conflagration? - Olympic Ceremonies: Spectacles of National Branding and Global Projection - Olympic Games, Truces, and Wars (Sochi, 2014; Beijing, 2022) - History's Ghosts Trample Roughshod over Ukraine - We Know How Things Start But Not How They Are Going to End: The Russian Invasion of Ukraine - Queen Elizabeth II's Passing and the U.S. Media: Reflections of a Lowercase "r" Republican - If History Is of Any Value: March 2020, Revisited - Putin's Dirty War, Geopolitical Adjustments and Prospects for Future Wars - Toward a Second American Civil War? - The Global Authoritarian Wave, Democratic Countercurrents and Dangerous Crosscurrents - Epilogue: Deadlines, Periodization and This Book's Title - Index - About the Author.