Power

In his latest book, Michael Kazin argues that the Democrats have long sought to build a “moral capitalism.” Have they ever succeeded?

On Spiro Agnew's lasting legacy.

James Garfield is known primarily for being assassinated. But his life reveals the character of nineteenth-century America.

Rethinking the twentieth century.

The only question is whether American citizens today can uphold that commitment.

A historic 1908 conference transcended party and personal interest for the ‘common good.'

The Federal Home Loan Bank Board openly admitted to operating as the Johnny Appleseed of redlining, sowing its seeds into the private financial system.

Might a world republic provide humanity with the tools to address the climate emergency, runaway artificial intelligence, and new weapons of mass extermination?

A new book argues that American politics are defined by unfulfilled desire.

In “Liberalism Against Itself,” Samuel Moyn stresses the need to resuscitate an earlier and more rousing wave of thinkers.

A history as intertwined with race as with partisanship.

Writing under ancient veneers allowed partisans to politicize and weaponize ancient history during the turbulent start of the Federal Republic.

Where abolitionists and congressmen—including Lincoln—dined, debated, and became bedfellows.

Newly digitized journals reveal the life of Gouverneur Morris, the Constitution preamble writer, vocal opponent of slavery and disabled congressman.

The relationship between two true believers in American exceptionalism.

A new book about Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing traces the path from Ronald Reagan’s antigovernment ideology to today’s radicalized right.

Civil rights activists failed to expel an all-white, segregationist delegation. But their efforts foreshadowed later milestones in the fight for equality

Keir Milburn argues that generational analysis can explain class operation while Adolph Reed Jr. writes that it obscures historically specific social relations.

The president didn’t want to go too far on civil rights in 1948, fearing it would cost him reelection. But an obscure mayor changed the race — and his party.

Development and dispossession as a two-pronged conquest.

Public outcry over whistleblower William Morgan's disappearance gave rise to the Anti-Masonic Party, which nominated a candidate for president in 1832.

Did Richmond violate the Voting Rights Act by adding thousands of White residents? The historic Supreme Court case foreshadowed today’s gerrymandering fights.

How the law became a staging ground for unrestrained war.

The inventor of the atomic bomb, the subject of Christopher Nolan’s new film, was the chief celebrity victim of the national trauma known as McCarthyism.

The standard narrative of Roosevelt's court-packing efforts casts them as a failure. But what if they were a success?

Before going to the press, Ellsberg spent a year and a half quietly leaking the Pentagon Papers to leading antiwar lawmakers. They all declined to speak out.

Communists were excluded from an Oklahoma Pride festival recently, a reminder of how easily the Red Scare’s mechanisms for state repression can be revived.

A new book revisits Freud’s analysis of Woodrow Wilson to ask: how much do leaders’ psychologies shape our politics?

On the moral courage of Daniel Ellsberg.

A long history of disrespect, dispossession and mass slaughter is crucial to understanding the case.