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A painting of a steamship on the Mississippi River.

A Fundamental Boundary: What the Mississippi River Means to America

On the meaning and use of rivers and other waterways.
by Boyce Upholt via Literary Hub on June 11, 2024
Chicago Workers' Cottages.

Chicago Workers Cottages Gave Immigrants Access to Homeownership

The cottages’ modest design provided entry-level homes after the Great Chicago Fire.
by Zach Mortice via CityLab on July 28, 2024
Rickwood Field is the oldest ballpark in the United States.

Everyone Should Know About Rickwood Field, the Alabama Park Where Baseball Legends Made History

The sport's greatest figures played ball in the Deep South amid the racism and bigotry that would later make Birmingham the center of the civil rights movement.
by Patrick Sauer via Smithsonian on June 12, 2024
Illustration of gay bar patrons and a park ranger at Stonewall National Monument.

What Is Stonewall in 2024?

A touristy dive bar, an unfinished liberation movement, and now a visitor center for the National Park Service.
by Brock Colyar via Curbed on June 20, 2024

Exhibits

Exhibit

Heart Lands

The American Midwest in history and memory.

Exhibit

NOLA Pasts

How legacies of geography, colonization, and slavery have shaped activism and spawned cultural innovation.

San Francisco parade poster.
Exhibit

Frisco Bound

Explore the city's history of cultural innovation and its fights for social and economic justice.

Exhibit

Boston Commons

The innovations, and the prejudices, that have shaped the landscape and the community of the "hub of the universe."

Independence Hall.
Exhibit

Philadelphia Story

The revolutionary debates in the nation's first capital were only the beginning of Philadelphia as a site of contested legal, political, and medical innovation.

Nan Lurie's "Women's House of Detention drawing in Greenwich Village.

How Greenwich Village Became America’s Bohemia

Greenwich Village’s bohemian and queer culture roots lie in its history of incarcerating women, notably via the Women’s Court and House of Detention.
by Hugh Ryan via The Gotham Center on November 20, 2024
The famous photo of the eyes from The Great Gatsby.

How “The Great Gatsby” Changed the Landscape of New York City

On Robert Moses, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the culture of environmental waste.
by John Marsh via Literary Hub on November 13, 2024
Image of the outline of the United States in red fire.

A Dark Reminder of What American Society Has Been and Could Be Again

How an obsessive hatred of immigrants and people of color and deep-seated fears about the empowerment of women led to the Klan’s rule in Indiana.
by Annette Gordon-Reed via The New Yorker on November 9, 2024
View of mountains on the horizon

Who Owns the Mountains?

Hurricane Helene has revived urgent questions about the politics of land — and tourism — in Appalachia.
by Olivia Paschal via New York Review of Books on November 3, 2024
Portrait of Jenny Lind by George Healy.

Jenny Lind, Taylor Swift, and Another Era's Tour

How the Taylor Swift of her age captivated New Orleans.
by Craig Fuchs via The Historic New Orleans Collection on October 24, 2024
A view of a pool of lava on a snowy day in Yellowstone National Park.

A Geological Time Bomb: Remembering the Night That Yellowstone Exploded

Considering the impact of the 1959 earthquake that shook our most famous national park.
by Randall K. Wilson via Literary Hub on October 24, 2024
Talc and soapstone statue from North Carolina.

Who Were the Mysterious Moon-Eyed People of Appalachia?

Tales of strange, nocturnal people haunt the region—and so do theories about who they were, from a lost Welsh "tribe" to aliens.
by Hadley Meares via Atlas Obscura on October 22, 2024
Photo of 5 skeletons controlling panels.

Notes from the Cold War Underground

The weapons infrastructure of the Cold War is now getting rented out on Airbnb or memorialized as patriotic kitsch.
by Emily Harnett via The Baffler on October 22, 2024
Crowded and brightly-lit Beale Street in Memphis.

Memphis: The Roots of Rock in the Land of the Mississippians

Rising on the lands of an ancient agricultural system, Memphis has a long history of negotiating social conflict and change while singing the blues.
by Rob Crossan via JSTOR Daily on October 18, 2024

A Hundred-and-Nineteen-Year-Old Book That Explains Eric Adams

A collection of political sermons attributed to a crooked machine boss is a handy reference for New York City’s current political chaos.
by Eric Lach via The New Yorker on October 17, 2024
Debris from hurricane Helene.
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America Forgot a Crucial Lesson From Hurricanes of the Past

History reveals that even weakening storms do catastrophic damage when they hit mountainous regions.
by Justin McBrien via Made By History on October 9, 2024
Boylston Street, Jamaica Plain, Boston, a residential street with a bike lane and a Black Lives Matter sign.

My Street Looks Different Now: Oral History and the Anti-Redlining Movement

For residents, organizers, and onlookers, neighborhoods can be a window for witnessing and making sense of history.
by Joshua Rosen via The Metropole on October 8, 2024
People protesting the demolition of homes to make way for the performing arts saying "shelter before culture."

Lincoln Center Destroyed Lives for the Sake of the Arts

The terrific new doc “San Juan Hill” chronicles the 1960s land grab that gave the Metropolitan Opera a home, while scattering longtime residents.
by Elizabeth Zimmer via Village Voice on October 3, 2024

The Making of the Springfield Working Class

Each generation of this country’s workforce has always been urged to detest the next—to come up with its own fantasies of cat-eating immigrants.
by Gabriel Winant via New York Review of Books on September 30, 2024
Battleship NEW YORK at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard dry dock, Bremerton, Washington, 1914

Postcolonial Pacific: The Story of Philippine Seattle

The growth of Seattle in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is inseparable from the arrival of laborers from the US-colonized Philippines.
by H. M. A. Leow, Dorothy Fujita-Rony via JSTOR Daily on September 29, 2024
Man burning a picture of Abraham Lincoln.

City on Fire

The night violent anti-government conspirators sowed chaos in the heart of Manhattan.
by Betsy Golden Kellem via The Atavist on September 24, 2024
Allyson Gray strolls through Dragon Run, Virginia.

The Hidden Story of Native Tribes Who Outsmarted Bacon’s Rebellion

A scene of conflict that was lost to the ages has been unearthed, assembling an indigenous perspective on events at the very root of America’s founding.
by Gregory S. Schneider via Washington Post on September 20, 2024
Map of Central Park.

How Central Park Holds the Answers to Big NYC Secrets

From ancient Native American trails to billion-year-old rocks, take an in-depth look at the thousands of years of history housed inside this iconic park.
via Architectural Digest on September 19, 2024
"Winter Scene in Brooklyn," 1820 painting by Francis Guy.

How Brooklyn’s Earliest Black Residents Found Empowerment and Solidarity in Their Diverse Community

The little known history of 19th-century New York City.
by Prithi Kanakamedala via Literary Hub on September 18, 2024
An inaccurate Spanish map from the 1500s of the southeast of the United States.

To Understand Mississippi, I Went to Spain

The forces that would shape my home state’s violent history were set in motion by a 480-year-old map made by a Spanish explorer.
by Wright Thompson via The Atlantic on September 17, 2024
Donald Trump stands in front of a microphone, holding a graph titled "Illegal Immigration into the US."

Trump’s Anti-Haitian Hate Has Deep American Roots

The former president’s grotesque demagoguery is just the latest in a long line of vicious attacks on residents and immigrants from the island nation.
by Jonathan M. Katz via The New Republic on September 16, 2024
Map of Cherokee Allotment from the Dawes Commission.

Coercion

“Allotment”—and its repercussions.
by Rebecca Nagle via Los Angeles Review of Books on September 8, 2024
Tourists on a ferry sailing along the coast of Maine.

A Picture-Book Guide to Maine

Children’s stories set on the coast suggest a wilder way of life.
by Anna E. Holmes via The New Yorker on September 8, 2024
Aerial photo of housing projects in the Bronx.

Suffering, Grace and Redemption: How The Bronx Came to Be

On the early history of New York City's northernmost borough.
by Ian Frazier via Literary Hub on September 6, 2024
Forest of pine trees.

Tree of Peace, Spark of War

The white pines of New England may have done more than any leaf of tea to kick off the American Revolution.
by Ian Rose via JSTOR Daily on September 4, 2024
Three workers taking a break inside a salt mine in the 1940s.

Salt of the Earth

In Winn Parish, an ancient salt dome has sustained life for centuries.
by Kelby Ouchley via 64 Parishes on September 1, 2024
Costumed man and tourists in Colonial Williamsburg.

Where MAGA Granddads and Resistance Moms Go to Learn America’s Most Painful History Lessons

Welcome to Colonial Williamsburg, the largest living museum that is taking a radical approach to our national divides.
by Laura Jedeed via Politico Magazine on August 31, 2024

They Settled in Houston After Katrina — and Then Faced a Political Storm

The backlash against an effort to resettle 200,000 evacuees holds lessons for future disasters.
by Jake Bittle via Grist on August 27, 2024
Storefront of Nazi-owned "Aryan Book Store" called "Silver Shirt Literature."

Bigoted Bookselling: When the Nazis Opened a Propaganda Bookstore in Los Angeles

On Hitler’s attempt to win Americans over to his cause.
by Evan Friss via Literary Hub on August 21, 2024
Aerial view of suburbs.
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To Understand What Could Happen on Election Day, Understand the Suburbs

Even as they've diversified, suburban politics have remained protectionist — often defying ideological categorization.
by Becky M. Nicolaides via Made By History on August 15, 2024
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