Rick Perlstein

Presidential polls are no more reliable than they were a century ago. So why do they consume our political lives?

Demography has not managed to be destiny in the past half-century—but predictions of a millenarian shift have not lost their appeal.

As Cornel West is receiving ballot access help from Republicans, 20 years ago Al Sharpton’s campaign for president was largely orchestrated by Roger Stone.

The response to college protests against the war on Gaza exemplifies the darkness of the Trumpocene.

A new PBS documentary whitewashes the conservative founder of National Review.

The former secretary of state is responsible for virtually every American geopolitical disaster of the past half-century.

On how Europe’s interwar period informs the present.

The right’s long and all-too-unanswered war on liberal institutions claims a big one.

How right-wing school panics seek to repeal modernity and progress.

On the laughing emptiness at the center of the Republican Party.

Why it’s foolish to think the modern GOP will ever break with its lunatic fringe.

In so many ways, Limbaugh helped sow the seeds of the pathologies we're now living through.

Wielding the outside agitator trope has always, at bottom, been a way of putting dissidents in their place.

As a historian, I’ve spent a lot of time looking at the fallout from Watts and other rebellions.

Nicholas Lemann’s history of 20th century corporations, Transaction Man, shows how an unrelenting faith in the market and profit doomed the American economy.

The Obama library lands on Chicago.

The 42 minute recording, acquired by James Carter IV, confirms Atwater’s incendiary remarks and places them in context.