Excerpts

How German Enlightenment thought influenced Abraham Lincoln.

Two new books reveal the shortcomings at the heart of the liberal critique of Trump voters.

How women's liberation transformed America and why our understanding of 1963-1973 needs to include more voices.

During the half-century between Lincoln and Woodrow Wilson, class warfare in the United States was always robust, usually ferocious, and often homicidal.

A new book charts the history of pet cemeteries and honors the universal experience of grieving an animal companion.

In two new books, the rise of recycling is a story of illusory promises, often entwined with disturbing political agendas.

New books reconsider how Ulysses S. Grant became a forceful defender of the rights of African Americans after the Civil War.

A recent history revisits the Tokyo trial.

Originalism is not so much an idea as a legal-industrial complex divided into three parts—the academic, the jurisprudential, and the political.

Many vignettes of sheriffs in action are dramatic and alarming. But how representative are they?

The deep roots of debt relief activism in the United States.

Some scholars say that it’s to blame for our political dysfunction—and that we need to start over.

Historians may never speak of an “Age of Adams” to rival Andrew Jackson, but Randall Woods’s new biography reveals the sixth president’s greatness.

The yuppies embodied the winning side of America’s deepening economic divide. Bruce Springsteen spoke for those left behind.

A new book tells the story of American communism as an integral part of 20th-century US history, with Communists “as social critics and social change agents.”

On Nelson Rockefeller and the disappearance of moderate Republicans from American politics.

A new book blames institutional Protestantism for undermining a vibrant strain of Christian radicalism that swirled through the Gilded Age.

Nathan Perl-Rosenthal’s book can guide us through turbulent conversations about revolution, social change, and the founding of America.

To capture the spirit of the poet Audre Lorde, Alexis Pauline Gumbs decided to break all the rules.

Twenty-five years ago, protesters shut down the meeting of the World Trade Organization. At the time, it seemed very important. But is it now?

Anti-Trump Republicans revere Ronald Reagan as Trump’s opposite—yet in critical ways Reagan may have been his forerunner.

Richard Beck’s “Homeland” traces the far-reaching aftereffects of the attacks and tries to recover the events of the day, as they happened.

A new book on how 9/11 altered the national psyche also demonstrates how it stunted progressive politics.

The rhythms of our days may never be the same.

Stephen Breyer criticizes recent Supreme Court decisions and argues for a more pragmatic jurisprudence.

An epic account of a vital economic artery and our many efforts to control it.

Percival Everett refashions a Mark Twain classic.

Liberalism’s relationship to equality has, his­torically, been far from a warm embrace.

The long history of confusions, misconceptions, and miscalculations in the relationship between the US and Iraq, from 1979 to 2003.

Why the far right embraces foreign tyrants.

Should equality, instead of another political ideal, should be at the center of our politics?

Screwball comedies are beloved films, but for decades historians and critics have disagreed over what the genre is and which movies belong to it.

A new book on the famed 1920s court case traces a long-simmering culture war—and the fear that often drives both sides.

Black miners were intentionally erased from the record of the Hawk's Nest Tunnel Disaster. A new book reinserts them into the narrative.

An elegiac retelling of rap's origins, "Hip-Hop Is History" also ends with a sense of hope.

Today’s battles over issues like gender nonconformity and reproductive rights have antecedents that have been lost or suppressed. What can we learn from them?

According to authors of a new book on how Iran has coped with economic sanctions imposed by the U.S., no one does.

The key measure of a healthy economy has long been growth, yet if production and consumption expand at their current rate we risk the health of the planet.

The supposed recluse constantly sent letters to friends, family, and lovers. What do they show us?

Christine Blasey Ford’s memoir captures the hazards of “coming forward.”

In the online era, brick-and-mortar book retailers have been forced to redefine themselves.

In the 20th century, American Communists were seen as an enemy within. In reality, they were ordinary people with complex lives that deserve to be chronicled.

Whose knowledge matters in a changing region?

A look at the psychedlic-inspired music scene of Detroit.

A new book argues that we misunderstand the forces that drove the notorious slave rebel.

Two books that remind us that tone and timbre, musical style and sound, matter to history.

A prison is a difficult thing to kill.

Maurice Isserman’s history of American communism documents both its achievements and its fatal obeisance to Soviet doctrines.

It is hard not to figure the 1968 election as inaugurating the cultural and political polarisation of the American electorate so evident today.

Defining a social type is a way of defining an era. What can the time of the young urban professional tell us about our own?