Excerpts

Passing your eyes over those first, electric sentences, it occurs to you that his readers are still catching up.

The AFL-CIO’s role in weakening left-wing labor unions around the world, between the 1940s and 1990s.

The untold story behind the killings of two Americans by the Chilean military after the coup.

In the early twentieth century, America's literature seemed provincial until Malcolm Cowley championed writers like Kerouac and Faulkner as distinctly American.

An institutional history of the “peculiar institution.”

A new book doesn’t aim to skewer Jewish defenders of slavery or celebrate Jewish abolitionists, but to understand them, warts and all.

How and why Walter A. McDougall's representation of history differs from the standard narrative, especially regarding the Wilson administration.

Althea Gibson, one of the great tennis players of the twentieth century, made segregation in her sport untenable.

When the WTO gathered in Seattle in 1999, protests erupted. Their strategy offers a model for resisting globalization at a time of renewed urgency.

Abortion has been an inescapable fact of life for millennia. So why do women gain or lose control over their reproductive lives at different times in history?

Histories of the epidemic tend to focus on coastal cities, but the response was very different in the middle of the country.

Rambunctious and often offensive, R. Crumb draws freely on pre-existing racial and gender stereotypes.

The survival of slave trading during the Civil War suggests that enslaved people remained valuable commodities in a time of economic upheaval.

What makes a house feel haunted and why do people keep telling these stories?

Why is the essential promise of technology and the alleviation of drudgery not enough?

The story of the Armed Services Editions.

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

Municipal bonds have become an unavoidable part of local governance—and their costs divide rich towns from poor ones.

A new history of New York City during World War II captures the glory, tawdriness, poverty, narcissism, beauty, and grime of this “aggregation of villages.”

Springsteen’s 1982 classic has become an American scripture, its ghosts of fathers and highways still haunting today’s America.

How the critic Malcolm Cowley made American literature into its own great tradition.

New York City NIMBYism, restrictive zoning, and Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s "Abundance."

A recent book on Toni Morrison's career in publishing makes the case that the great American novelist should also be seen as a pathbreaking editor.

Arguably no American journalist wielded as much influence as Walter Lippmann did in the 20th century. But what did he do with that power?

Revisiting the Lost Cause through post–Civil Rights Movement alternative histories.

When the remains of prehistoric creatures were discovered in Europe and the U.S., it opened up a heated debate on the nature of time and the purpose of science.

How four presidential administrations managed to evade moral responsibility for the “war on terror” by hiding behind legality and process.

A new book links the Pacific Northwest’s infamous serial killers to decades of toxic lead pollution, arguing that poison bred violence.

A nuanced and historically informed analysis of the sudden sea change in US-China relations.

New fusionist intellectuals are the missing link between nineteenth-century race science, twentieth-century libertarianism, and the contemporary alt-right.

The proliferation of privately held companies during the Reagan years laid the foundations for Trump’s approach to government.

How Amanda Vaill gave Eliza and Angelica Schuyler their due.

The history of a single photograph reveals how an atrocity in the Philippines was forgotten by its American perpetrators.

Charles Sumner's example reminds us that "with enough courage and drive, can alter the trajectory of American racial history."

A review of Columbus's impact on the political, economic, and religious effects within the Renaissance period of Europe and the beginning of global exploration.

How liberal Protestants helped to shape the US's views on liberalism, human rights, and current political divides.

Two new books make the case that “when and where you are Latino matters.”

How the Scopes trial informs today's culture wars.

Tracing John Lewis’s lifelong fight for democracy and inclusion.

Karl Marx never visited the United States, but he and his ideas left an imprint nonetheless.

As some financial leaders fret publicly about the stock market falling to earth, a new book recounts the greatest crash of them all.

She lived for 97 years. Only 24 of them were with Alexander Hamilton.

In Life of a Klansman, Edward Ball’s white supremacist great-great-grandfather becomes a case study in the enduring legacy of slavery.

What happens when Hitler’s shadow fades—and what moral vision replaces it?

The web of Atlantic trading routes and solidarity among maritime workers meant a fugitive's chances of reaching freedom below deck were better than over land.

Cory Doctorow’s ‘Enshittification’ describes how tech platforms (and everything else) went down the sewer. Hint: It rhymes with ‘deshmegulation.’

"An account of how chips became a strategically vital resource whose importance is overlooked at our peril.”

To finance the war, the Union had to turn to the banks, and with lasting consequences.

Zbigniew Brzezinski’s ideas had a profound impact in his time. What would he think of the world we face today?

A new book frames America's gun culture as the consequence of the U.S.'s post-World War II decisions to favor consumerism over safety.