Power

J. Edgar Hoover’s ascent within the FBI reveals the birth of an unprecedented surveillance apparatus that would survey US citizens for decades to come.

The actual history of New Deal policies provides little evidence that it was a rollicking success.

The Spiro Agnew Edition.

More than an artful calligrapher, John Hancock forswore the austerity of his fellow Bostonians, and their extremism.

In “Tyranny of the Minority,” Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt argue that the document has doomed our politics. But it can also save them.

Nationalism, not postmodernism, is the fount of today's politics of recognition.

Alexander Hamilton always believed that the providential protection that kept the small Jewish world alive would embrace his own extraordinary nation.

A scholarly roundtable on Samuel Moyn's new book.

The Puritans outlawed Thomas Morton's "New English Canaan" because it was critical of the society they were building in colonial New England.

How Eugene V. Debs turned American republicanism against the chiefs of capitalism – and became a true crusader for freedom.

There have always been two Americas. One based in religious zeal, mythology, and inequality; and one grounded in rule of the people and the pursuit of equality.

There were more government shutdowns under Ronald Reagan than under every president since, combined. But some were as short as a few hours.

In “The Court at War,” Cliff Sloan examines the close relationship between FDR and the high court during World War II.

To Heather Cox Richardson, the battle for our history is the battle for our democracy. And we may be nearing the endgame.

A bad history.

Clinton’s role in decoupling the Democratic Party from mainstream labor, first in Arkansas and then nationally, had dire consequences.

There are certainly good grounds to criticize Cold War liberalism. But Samuel Moyn's new book, like similar critiques, has a classic baby-bathwater problem.

How Cold War liberalism abandoned the vocabulary of hope—and how we still live with the consequences.

There's more to Gerald Ford, "the son of a bitch pardoned the son of a bitch,” than Watergate.

The proportional representation (PR) vs. single transferable vote (STV) battle in local elections.

Lord, implored President Biden, let us "turn the page" on the War on Terror. Just not yet.

A conversation about the Cold War’s profound and negative influence on the liberal worldview.

Finding space for cars has remade the built world. A new history uncovers just how much our lives revolve around parking.

"Liberalism Against Itself" makes an incoherent attack on liberalism.

Urban socialists blazed a path toward social democracy. Leftists who want to reclaim this tradition face a whole new set of obstacles.

Frank Church and the committee that investigated the US intelligence agencies.

A left that is ambivalent about liberalism can still seek to engage it.

Leaders of the political right learned lessons from the 1960s that still inform the movement today.

Lionel Trilling crystallizes the cynical Cold War liberalism that sacrificed idealism for self-restraint.

Class conflict undermines assumptions about political solidarity.