Excerpts

From the pianoforte to the smartphone, each wave of tech has sparked fears of brain rot. But the problem isn’t our ability to focus—it’s what we’re focusing on.

Depictions of Antietam couldn’t possible capture the magnitude of the battle’s horror.

We need to bring back the celebratory atmosphere that animated Election Day in the 19th century.

The Catholic order has branches all over the world, and a deep history of unethical and illegal behavior.

A new book questions what we think we know about heterosexuality and Latter-day Saints, or Mormons.

Publishing needs his democratic spirit.

We categorized songs in the Billboard Top 10 to see if love songs are on the decline.

The stories of two Muslim immigrants who fought for the Union show that the American Civil War was an international fight.

The uproar over Trump’s remarks about the Canal recalls a lively debate from the late 1970s.

Does the text mean what it plainly says?

He's not the first to set his sights on the island.

I covered the 1989 fight over George H.W. Bush's secretary of defense nominee. It feels awfully familiar.

By threatening to reclaim the Panama Canal, Trump is evoking false stories about U.S. beneficence.

What does the Jewish experience in the Revolutionary War say about America?

Washington Cathedral’s break with Confederate memory.

You know that punchy percussive sound popularized by Phil Collins and Prince? This is where it came from.

Elon Musk’s defenders were quick to claim that his hand motion was actually an ancient “Roman salute” — but that gesture never existed.

The connections between the first president’s commitment to agricultural innovation and his evolving attitudes toward his enslaved laborers at Mount Vernon.

On Jazz Age gay culture and its backlash.

A language of the air.

The fleet provided activists with reliable transportation in hostile and often dangerous environments.

After the Civil War, Andrew Johnson issued the biggest act of presidential clemency in our history. It angered his party and led to his eventual impeachment.

Any attempt to revive solidarity between rich and poor nations must begin by recapturing the commitment to social and economic rights that inspired the WHO.

A historian of U.S. empire discusses nuclear Greenland, selling Puerto Rico, and the renaissance of William McKinley.

What was the liberal #Resistance "Twitterstorian"? And what did commentators like Heather Cox Richardson morph into during the Biden years?

Two new biographies enhance our knowledge of John Lewis, the late congressman and civil rights hero.

The “Groypers,” the furthest-right fringe of Trump’s coalition, want the party to adopt an overtly white nationalist agenda.

The Dole pineapple plantation has a destructive history of transforming the Hawaiian Islands—something that continues today in the tourism industry.

Black-authored print was central to James G. Birney’s conversion from enslaver to abolitionist and presidential candidate.

Dinner parties in the capital have long been a path to power, but Perle Mesta had her eye on a different prize.

Trump's foreign policy is not as unprecedented as it seems.

It started as a trade secret. Then it became an icon.

The third president knew that the whims of nature shaped Americans’ daily lives as farmers and enslavers.

"I pledge to laugh / At the Flag / Of the United States of America..."

In the 1970s, a crop of books purporting to provide a scientific basis for gender inequality met sharp criticism from figures like Gould.

On John Huggins, Angela Y. Davis, and the complex history of an oft-misunderstood political movement.

In the late ’70s, a pro women’s hoops team briefly captivated the city by living up to its name. Then it all unraveled.

The life of John Andrew Jackson — and the vacillating richness and scarcity of the archive.

On Barbara Lee and the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force.

Osgood Carleton and his forgotten 1795 map of Boston.

On October 6, 1923, Iowa State tackle Jack Trice lined up for the second half of a college football game. No one’s sure what happened in that third quarter.

Michael Boskin’s volume gives a grim account of the state of federalism today.

Headlines tell us that the campaigns of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have both opened a new chapter of populist politics. How is that possible?

Today, the international feminist group FEMEN uses nudity as part of its protests. But appearing naked in public was also a tactic used by early dissenters.

White supremacy and the birth of the modern Democratic Party.

Italian immigrants had no qualms about working and living alongside Black Americans, which made them targets for violence by white vigilantes in Louisiana.

In the 1970s board games joined TV, film, books, and other media in exploring the state of the environment.

How scholars achieved some of the most consequential intelligence victories of the twentieth century.

On the ongoing legal struggle for educational and racial equality across the United States.

In the 1970s, a conservative coalition came together to fight ceding control of the Panama Canal—proving the political potency of the issue.