Excerpts

Nancy Sinkoff discusses her new biography of Lucy S. Dawidowicz, a Holocaust historian whose role in the neoconservative movement is often forgotten.

Political scientist Adolph Reed Jr. discusses his new memoir.

How can historic data about segregation, redlining, and real estate be more accessible? In this interview, we dive into a new data set derived from HOLC maps.

Amid all the suffering and death, friends and supporters arose in unexpected—often religious—places.

A historian of global health explains how the lack of ICU beds in low-income communities is the result of government spending cuts dating back to the 1970s.

A new book argues that mail service played a critical role in the U.S. government’s westward expansion and occupation of Native lands.

From the Black Panthers to the Communist Party, radical Los Angeles in the ’60s was a seething cauldron of unrest, united by the brutal repression of the LAPD.

A leading historian of Madison's political thought explains that the framer "did not believe in minority rule."

"The problem is the way policing was built," historian Khalil Muhammad says.

Suburbs are getting more diverse, but that doesn't mean they’re woke.

He forced the country to engage in a three-year conversation about the meaning of free speech that shaped policy and law after World War I.

An Illinois high school teacher explains how his state complicates the binary of “free states” and “slave states.”

“What if we identified the politics of municipal debt as circumscribing political horizons and futures?”

"If you read enough sources, you run into cases of slaves spending a lot of time over Christmas crying."

In the 1930s, Socialist and Communist organizers tried to help Black sharecroppers rise up against their oppressors.

A conversation with the biographer of radical Jewish 'revenge theologian' Meir Kahane.

Historian Richard White on the greed, ineptitude and economic cost behind the transcontinental railroads, and the implications for infrastructure policy today.

The historian Allen C. Guelzo believes that the Confederate general deserves a more compassionate reading.

An interview with Sean Wilentz on Library of America's new collection of Richard Hofstadter's works.

Led by A. Philip Randolph, Black Pullman porters secured dignity on the job — and laid the foundation for the modern Civil Rights Movement.

The debate between historians and economists over the definition of capitalism, and the legacy of slavery in the structure of today's economy.

Fidel Castro's visit to Harlem at the intersection of two themes that shaped the 1960s: the Black freedom struggle and global protest during the Cold War.

On the corrupt, contaminated, deceptive world of 19th-century food adulteration, and how Cohen's own work straddles pure academia and public-facing scholarship.

Guns have always loomed large in Black people's lives — going all the way back to the days of colonial slavery, explains reporter Alain Stephens from The Trace.

Today’s “medical freedom” warriors are drawing on a centuries-old American tradition.

It’s never just about religion, says the author of a book about celebrities discovering new religious identities.

Lawrence Matsuda talks about his family history, his experiences of discrimination, and his work in bilingual and Asian American representation in education.

The human rights activist and former sharecropper once said that “you are not free whether you are white or black, until I am free.”

In the 1960s and 1970s, photographer Leni Sinclair stood at the center of a local scene where political and cultural ferment merged.

May Ngai uses her experiences as an activist in the 1980s and her research on the 19th century Chinese diaspora to debunk stereotypes about Chinese Americans.

Antebellum slaveholders weren't content with an economic and social system based on trafficking in human flesh in the South alone.

A new book argues that the real estate industry’s campaign to defend housing segregation still echoes in today’s politics.

The psychological forces driving “red COVID” have deep historical roots.

Historian Davarian Baldwin explains how universities have come to wield the kind of power that were once hallmarks of ruthless employers in company towns.

A wide-ranging conversation with the philosopher on the white supremacist roots of liberal thought, Biden’s victory, and Trumpism without Trump.

A new book explores how George Washington shaped the group of advisors as an institution to meet his own needs.

Why the framers created the Electoral College — and why we need to get rid of it.

“I was shocked to learn that Hispanic conservatives celebrate Cortes’s arrival in Mexico.”

The New Yorker staff writer Steve Coll on the humanitarian catastrophe that is now likely to engulf Afghan civilians, and how Joe Biden is shifting the blame.

What’s new about the controversy over the Alamo’s history, and how the way Texans tell its story relates to how Americans see each other.

“Wherever there is race reform, there’s inevitably retrenchment.”

Records tell the story of the decline of the patriarchy, marrying young, and pandemic fallout. Digitizing the data could reveal even richer tales.

Pulitzer-winning historian Annette Gordon-Reed reflects on the battle for the past and the fragile state of American democracy.

In 1921, twenty thousand armed miners in West Virginia marched on the coal bosses and were met with bombs and submachine guns.

"What makes this conspiracy theory so damaging is its adaptability."

The “border” is not a line on the ground, but a tool that enables violence and surveillance.

On the intersectionality of enslaved women and common misunderstandings about slavery.

In the 1800s, they helped lay the groundwork for the anti-vaccine movement.

How garbage physically shaped the development of New York.

Alfredo Villanueva-Collado on his J.C. Leyendecker collection and the fascinating story behind this oft-neglected male image maker.