Excerpts

An oral history project to document the stories of federal workforce cuts is open to all feds and contractors — even DOGE and Musk.

Senator Joseph McCarthy built his reputation on fear-mongering, smear campaigns, and falsehoods about government employees and their associates.

Dean Acheson, President Truman’s prim, patrician undersecretary of state, was sitting in his office on February 21, 1947, when he received a visitor.

Donald Trump’s authoritarian second term has led critics to describe him as a fascist in the mold of Adolf Hitler.

Where amid this turmoil does neoliberalism stand? In emergency conditions it has been forced to take measures.

For historian Russell Shorto, it was all about water.

International trade boomed with the city’s early adoption of technological and economic changes, but Black neighborhoods became ‘sacrifice zones.’

The radical legacy of Abram Colby, one of Georgia’s first Black legislators, was almost erased by racist revisionists.

In the 1910 World Heavyweight Championship, London cheered on Jim Jeffries as he faced off with Jack Johnson, the first Black heavyweight champion.

A long and ugly history.

A presidential lawyer and historian combed through the latest document dump so you don’t have to. Here’s what he found.

What it means, why it matters, and where it started.

For decades, the NCAA vigorously opposed sports gambling. Now, March Madness is one of the most bet-on sporting events.

When does our taste in music stagnate?

City of the living dead.

The recent commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the bloody Elaine Massacre sought to correct the historical record and start hard conversations.

Delivered 250 years ago, the famous oration marked the Henry’s influence. The politician also served in key roles in Virginia’s state government.

A story of a 150-year-old font you have never heard of – and one you probably saw earlier today.

“The lesson of the Tinker case is: Speak up. Stand up,” Mary Beth Tinker told us.

Anvil's popular vision for a multiracial socialism in the heart of the US could hardly be more urgent today.

A review of Edwin Frank's short list of great 20th century novels.

The effort to return American government to republican principles is daunting—but the Founders’ wisdom can serve as a guide.

How East New York was ransacked by the real estate industry and abandoned by the city in the process.

The U.S. government repeatedly tried to deport the midcentury labor leader over his alleged ties to the Communist Party.

The Virginia delegate may have spoken those words on March 23, 1775, but some historians doubt it.

Revisiting a 1925 march through the eyes of Black newspapers.

With controversy raging over the Alien Enemies Act, how should we understand the concept it invoked?

The life and work of Frank Wisner, one of the CIA’s founding officers, offers us a portrait of American intelligence’s excesses.

Urban landscapes and communities all across the state of Virginia still bear the scars of urban renewal.

White women were especially likely to be owners involved in transactions with enslaved women, where they were listed as owners in nearly 40% of transactions.

Agency sought drugs and behavior control techniques to use in “special interrogations” and offensive operations.

I was once paid six figures to write an article—now what?

Ida B. Wells-Barnett, whose January 1900 essay exposed the racist reasons given by mobs for their crimes, argued that lynch law was an American shame.

This defense misconstrues both the Constitution and the Supreme Court decisions relying on it.

We are told that we are a Calvinist culture, which means very little, and none of that good.

The Reagan administration offers a cautionary tale about cost-cutting zeal crashing up against the reality of how government works.

In the nineteen-sixties, artists such as Bo Diddley and the Ike & Tina Turner Revue played the prom at Pembroke-Country Day.

During World War II, the law justified the imprisonment of thousands like Heidi Gurcke Donald.

Those who wish to restore democratic rule, regardless of political orientation, must take it seriously.

The push to make students into customers incentivizes faculty to seek visibility through controversy rather than through traditional scholarly achievement.

For Henry David Thoreau, it is only as strangers that we can see each other as the bearers of divinity we really are.

Looking for the poet between the lines.

Executive trade power has gone too far.

Do people really like Edgar Allen Poe?

A new history traces the development and influence of the global Wages for Housework movement from its founding to present day.

The long tradition of the US government using border policy as a tool for political control, stretching back to Red Scare efforts to suppress left-wing dissent.

Trampling rights, imposing tariffs, gobbling up others’ territories. Trump is imitating his role models to a T.

While academic freedom is foundational to American higher education today, it is a relatively recent development.

Donald Trump is showing us what an unaccountable class of corporate decision-makers looks like—and it looks like a lot of fear, and a terrible loss of freedom.

There’s a long history of politicians targeting student protesters — and of campus leaders abetting those efforts.