Excerpts

African American educators became the ‘hidden provocateurs’ who spearheaded the push for racial justice in education.

A hurricane historian talks about the still-unfolding disaster in Puerto Rico.

A century-old image and the film it inspired.

The FBI has long tried to destroy socialist organizations, but its actions aren't limited to surveillance.

A new book conjures the complexity of the Bay Area and the perils of its immense, uneven wealth.

Muzzleloaders have evolved into smart-style automatic firearms in just 150 years.

When residents of the U.S. came to see Latin Americans as partners in a shared revolutionary experiment.

In a new book, a historian explores the American fascination with conversion, and its costs. 

The Founding Fathers were more interested in limiting democracy than securing and expanding it.

Simeon Wade describes visiting Death Valley with Michel Foucault in 1975.

Remembering how the white working class got left out of the New Left, and why we're all paying for it today.

Elizabeth Hinton discusses how twentieth-century policymakers anticipated the explosion of the prison population.

His photo of Kim Phuc was a transformative moment in a horrible conflict.

Here's what we've learned about mass protests since the 1917 Silent Parade.

The precedents for Trump’s hyped-up immigration crackdown.

What E.B. White, Mickey Spillane, Death Wish, hip-hop, and the “Summer of Hell” have in common.

With so little documentary evidence about his life, he is a virtual blank slate upon which different people at different times have inscribed a variety of meanings.

A Q&A with the author of "Enlisting Faith: How the Military Chaplaincy Shaped Religion and State in Modern America."

The banjo's history and its symbolism of community, slavery, resistance, and ultimately America itself.

Max Pine, 91, believes that one day “the Republicans will leap ahead of the Democrats and lead in its enactment.”

Columbia professor Richard R. John explains the history of U.S. monopolies and why antimonopoly should not be conflated with antitrust.

How every major industry and marketplace in America came to be controlled by a single, monolithic player.

A housing policy expert explains how federal government policies created the suburbs and the inner city.

On revolution and violence.

Historian Sara Yael Hirschhorn explains what has driven some American Jews to the most contentious real estate on earth.

Why an historian is compiling a digital database of the military records of 200,000+ black Union soldiers.

Experts weigh in on how historians of the future may assess President Trump's achievements after his first 100 days in office.

How 18th-century British arms sales, the slave trade, and the Revolutionary War contributed to the mess we have today.

An interview with Annette Gordon-Reed and Peter S. Onuf.

A conversation with the author of "Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America."

A conversation on party politics and the durability of our current political system.

How the ban on booze gave rise to prejudiced policing, the penal system, and the modern American right wing.

With wiretapping in the headlines and smart speakers in millions of homes, a look back to the early days of eavesdropping.

Mavis Staples' lyrics span from the civil-rights-era to today's societal issues.

Slave ownership was once as entrenched in American life as gun ownership.

A conversation with Anna Zeide about her book, “Canned: The Rise and Fall of Consumer Confidence in the American Food Industry.”

When trailers offered a compact version of the American dream.

The myth of Irish slavery has found fertile ground in Internet memes as a way to derail conversation about the need for affirmative action today.

Fifty years ago, teenagers organized a multi-school walkout that galvanized the Mexican-American community in Los Angeles.

In the 1970s, women and people of color streamed into unions, strikes swept the nation, and employers launched a fierce counterattack.

With its race issue, the magazine is trying a different direction. Can it escape its past?

A region that outsiders love to imagine but can’t seem to understand.

There are two critical periods for Christmas. One is the Victorian era. The other is the 1960s.

A conversation with the author of a forthcoming book about the twists and turns of Marx's legacy in America.

The notion that gun control has racist origins is popular in gun rights circles. Here's what's wrong with the claim.

A conversation with the creator of a virtual reality experience that takes you inside the protests leading up to MLK Jr.’s death.

An interview with a historian of Hamilton. That is, an “interview” in the modern sense of questions and answers and not in the Hamilton-Burr sense of pistols at dawn.

An art historian explains how portraits can convey so much more than mere likeness.

African American marriages before and after the Civil War.

Now all but forgotten, a group of New York socialites was instrumental to the success of the suffrage movement.