Excerpts

A new book chronicles the life of the 19th century political giant of Salmon Chase.

For decades, consumers were duped into believing that a fat-free food label would put them on track for weight loss, when the complete opposite was true.

The danger of making wars into moral crusades.

An unpublished memoir reveals how the world’s most famous child actress became a star of the environmental movement.

These men, women and children betrayed the Union and spied for the Confederacy. They're featured in a new online exhibit from the Wall of Spies Experience.

Washington has long been a disproportionately gay city—a mecca for clever, ambitious young men who want to escape their hometowns’ prying eyes.

Nelson “Little D” Ross talks soul and significance with music historian Robert Gordon.

The two may seem unconnected, but a centuries-long history of panic about White birth rates binds them together.

Edward Bellamy's utopia influenced a generation of urban planners.

The event originally borrowed sashes and pageantry from suffragists — whose vision for women we should honor instead.

Strengthening family ties has been key to overcoming nativism — and in 2020, it can do so again.

Daniel Bell was the prophet of a failed centrism. By the end of his life, he was revisiting the leftism of his youth.

New Year's Day used to be widely known as "Hiring Day" or "Heartbreak Day"

The less known story of Richard Nixon and his genuine love and care for his hometown team, the New York Mets.

A new book correctly diagnoses how non-elected agencies are running the country, but falls short on how it got this way.

On the Black doctors who received their medical degrees and a new sort of freedom in Europe.

Her first three books were odes to the world’s bodies of water and their creative power over all life forms.

The strange past and even stranger future of the stationary bicycle.

The shortage is a calamity—not a victory for breastfeeding.

“At the remove of time, it’s really hard to tell the difference between beat and beatsploitation.”

"The Origins of Totalitarianism" has much to say about a world of rising authoritarianism.

The debate over abortion is an important part of the story of polarization in American politics, but it is not its genesis.

Claims that mothers lacking formula should just breastfeed repeats a centuries-old mistake.

According to experts who monitor the radical right, the white supremacist ideology that police say drove the Buffalo gunman has begun moving into the mainstream.

The rich American history of Nazi-punching.

Fifty years ago, a fame-seeker shot the polarizing politician five times, paralyzing him from the waist down.

In “Captives,” former Rikers detainee Jarrod Shanahan traces the history of New York City’s sprawling jail complex, and its centrality to brutal class struggle.

On the women who kickstarted the ecological restoration movement in America.

This northern city was shaped by racial terrorism and persistent advocacy for Black liberation.

William James, Charles Peirce, and the questions that roiled them.

Religious bigotry is only less pressing today than racial bigotry because of progress Jefferson helped bring about.

The African American Patriot, who died in the Boston Massacre, was erased from visual history. Black abolitionists revived his memory.

History’s lessons for the volatile digital currency markets.

Celebrations of the Confederacy have steadily ebbed, and the recent confrontations will accelerate this retreat among all but the extremists.

The new fascists don’t wear uniforms; they make memes.

Using manumission to disentangle blackness and enslavement in Cuba, Louisiana, and Virginia.

Looking back on the George Floyd rebellion.

Clintonites taught their party how to talk about helping people without actually doing it.

Historian Gary Gerstle lays out an era's policies and ideologies, and what undermined them.

In the 1960s, the precursor to PBS explored the burgeoning conservative movement, providing a remarkable window into the history of conservatism.

And why it’s time to take it back.

The history of humans being confounded by color photography.

Our future might look much like our past, with pills as a major part of abortion access—and an obsessive target for abortion opponents.

Evangelicals started speaking out against legal abortion long before the late 1970s.

In 1932, Walter Duranty won a Pulitzer for stories defending Soviet policies that led to the deaths of millions of Ukrainians.

A scholar disproves the long-held assumption that black names are a recent phenomenon.

Children from poor families or with special formula needs are most at risk.

From the moment DeFord Bailey stepped onto a stage in Nashville, country music would never be the same. Decades after his death he finally got his due.

Until we grapple with our history, white supremacist terrorism will keep happening.

An expert on the white-power movement and the “great replacement” theory puts the act of terror in context.