Normandy American Cemetery.

Who Were the Americans Who Fought on D-Day?

A new exhibition seeks to understand the young soldiers who came ashore at Normandy.
A team photograph of the Homestead Grays.

The Negro Leagues Are Officially Part of MLB History — With the Records to Prove It

The MLB incorporated the statistics of 2,300 Black athletes who played in the segregated Negro Leagues, making the Josh Gibson its new all-time batting leader.
Liberty holding an American flag with "For the Union" written on it.

Capturing the Civil War

The images, diaries, and ephemera in Grand Valley State University’s Civil War and Slavery Collection reveal the cold realities of Abraham Lincoln’s world.
Rednecks by Taylor Brown.

The Battle of Blair Mountain and Stories Untold

An interview with Taylor Brown, author of the novel "Rednecks."
A colorful illlustration of Texas Rangers, three Tejano men, guns, and alcohol bottles.

After a Borderland Shootout, a 100-Year-Old Battle for the Truth

A century after three Tejano men were shot to death, the story their family tells is different than the official account. Whose story counts as Texas history?
Karl I of Austria.

Feeling Blessed

At the Habsburg Convention in Plano.
A drawing of a television screen between the fingers of someone framing an image of barbed wire.

The Problem With TV's New Holocaust Obsession

From 'The Tattooist of Auschwitz' to 'We Were the Lucky Ones,' a new wave of Holocaust dramas feel surprisingly shallow.
Nell Irvin Painter.

Nell Irvin Painter’s Chronicles of Freedom

A new career-spanning book offers a portrait of Painter’s career as a historian, essayist, and most recently visual artist.
Students in a Kent State University classroom.

Decades After Kent State Shooting, the Tragic Legacy Shapes its Activism

The university where 13 student protesters were killed or injured during the Vietnam War era worries that other schools have learned nothing from its history.
A historical marker outside Fendall Hall, a plantation.

Historical Markers Are Everywhere In America. Some Get History Wrong.

The nation's historical markers delight, distort and, sometimes, just get the story wrong.
Collage of security camera image and newspaper articles from the Columbine shooting.

The Columbine-Killers Fan Club

A quarter century on, the school shooters’ mythology has propagated a sprawling subculture that idolizes murder and mayhem.
Richard Slotkin.

“A Theory of America”: Mythmaking with Richard Slotkin

"I was always working on a theory of America."
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Why Does American History Feel Like Ancient History to High School Students?

An argument for returning the recent past, and the history of modern conservatism, to classrooms.
Map of the United States of America.

Remembering John Hope Franklin, OAH’s First Black President

The 2024 OAH Conference on American History falls almost fifteen years after the renowned historian, teacher, and activist's death.
Student reading history textbook
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A 1920s Lesson for the History Textbook Fight

The struggles of a century ago show that historians need to keep explaining their work and role to the public.
Statute of Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Virginia, with construction hook ready to remove it.
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History Shows the Danger of Comparing Trump to Jesus

It’s important to remember why analogies to Jesus should stay out of the political realm. The results are always ugly.
John Thorn photographed in front of baseball memorabilia.

How Baseball’s Official Historian Dug Up the Game’s Unknown Origins

A lifelong passion for the national pastime led John Thorn to redefine the sport's relationship with statistics and reveal the truth behind its earliest days.
“The Caring Hand,” by Eva Oertli and Beat Huber, sculpture of a hand holding a tree.

Bryan Stevenson Reclaims the Monument, in the Heart of the Deep South

The civil-rights attorney has created a sculpture park, indicting the city of Montgomery—a former capital of the domestic slave trade.
The Doctors' House in Glendale.

Pieces of the Past at the Doctors House: Glendale, California

How one house can contain larger stories of American migration and growth, reckonings with exclusion, and the advent of new technologies.
Old car holding up a mining chute on the over of the book “The Bootleg Coal Rebellion”

Rock-Fuel and Warlike People: On Mitch Troutman’s “The Bootleg Coal Rebellion”

Native son Jonah Walters finds something entirely too innocent about the tales told about the anthracite industry’s origins.
Reenactment of a group of settlers on the Ellis Trail, walking through prairie grass beside horse-drawn wagons.

Nicodemus, Kansas: The Last All Black Town in the West

Descendants of the first settlers in Nicodemus are working to preserve and share a story of grit, perseverance, self-governance, and homecomings.
A photograph of the SS Eastland.

Checking out Historical Chicago: Cynthia Pelayo's "Forgotten Sisters"

The SS Eastland disaster and Chicago's ghosts.
Two 1950s cars in front of a diner

You Can’t Go Home Again

Our thinking about nostalgia is badly flawed because it relies on defective assumptions about progress and time.
Painting of Mercy Otis Warren by John Singleton Copley.

Mercy Otis Warren, America’s First Female Historian

At the prodding of John and Abigail Adams, Mercy Otis Warren took on a massive project: writing a comprehensive history of the Revolutionary War.
Grave marker for "Special Case - Baby 1."

The Search for Special Case–Baby 1

Who was buried in the lonely grave in New York’s potter’s field? The year-long search led to a lost world in the history of AIDS.
Elon Musk's face edited onto Apple advertisements.

A Bullshit Genius

On Walter Isaacson’s biographical project.
Democrat and Republican stickers with letters (R or D) indicating the affiliation.

The Story Wars

The conflict between Red and Blue America is a clash of national mythologies.
Civil War soldiers on horseback with pistols.

The Hunt for John Wilkes Booth Goes On

A new television miniseries depicts the pursuit of Lincoln’s killer. But the public appetite for tales about the chase began even as it was happening.

The Annotated Oppenheimer

Celebrated and damned as the “father of the atomic bomb,” theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer lived a complicated scientific and political life.
The Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge.

Five Centuries Ago, France Came to America

This is the story of Giovanni da Verrazzano, who never reached Asia, but became the first European to set foot on the site of the future city of New York.