Francisco Franco and Ronald Reagan in Madrid, 1972.

The Autocratic Allure

Why the far right embraces foreign tyrants.
J. Edgar Hoover

J. Edgar Hoover Shaped US History for the Worse

As director of the FBI for decades, J. Edgar Hoover helped build a massive, professionalized national security state and hounded leftists out of public life.
J. Edgar Hoover (center) with President John F. Kennedy and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, February 23, 1961.

J. Edgar Hoover Tried to Destroy the Left — and Liberals Enabled Him

The author of a new biography explains how liberals played an important role in enabling Hoover’s antidemocratic crusade.
KKK march overlaid on J. Edgar Hoover

How Hoover Took Down the Klan

The FBI’s successful campaign against white supremacists is also a cautionary tale.
U.S. President Harry Truman and Secretary of State Dean Acheson, sit in the back seat of a car.

Harry Truman Helped Make Our World Order, for Better and for Worse

Institutions meant to secure peace, from NATO to the U.N., date back to Truman’s Presidency. So do the conflicts threatening that peace.
a stadium full of people

McCarthyism Was Never Defeated. Trumpism Won’t Be Either.

Censure brought down a crusading anti-communist senator but fired up his followers.

They Wanted to Remake the World; Instead We Got President Trump

Andrew Bacevich makes the case that America’s elites wasted the promise of the post-Cold War era.
Demonstrators with signs reading "Impeach Nixon" march toward the U.S. Capitol.

How Watergate Set the Stage for the Trump Impeachment Inquiry

The Nixon impeachment proceedings and their parallels with the Trump-Ukraine scandal.