Excerpts

On both sides of the color line, to own one’s home remains synonymous with freedom—even as real estate has proven itself to be relentlessly unequal.

Susie Orbach’s 1978 book is a fascinating snapshot of diet and physical culture in a very different era.

A recent Otis Redding biography examines what was and what could have been, 50 years after tragedy struck.

Many of us do not go gentle into that good night.

Faith’s pivotal role in the outcome of the Civil War.

How politicians used the story of one young patient to neglect the AIDS crisis.

Walter Camp praised the sport as a way to toughen up élite young white men. Despite changes to the game and society, his legacy remains.

Many of today's most influential right-wing tactics and arguments have their roots in 1960s-era college campuses.

Robin Blackburn’s sweeping history of slavery and freedom in the 19th century.

What a long-dead, cartoonishly corrupt Texas bureaucrat can tell us about the nature of immigration enforcement and the U.S.-Mexico divide.

How geology shaped American culture.

A new history of the CPUSA reads like a Cold War throwback.

“The Golden Girls” reframed senior life as being about socializing and sex. But did the cultural narrative of advanced age as continued youth go too far?

A new book celebrates an American political dynasty dedicated to public service. Why have they been forgotten?

What was “exceptional” about the American Revolution wasn’t so much the creation of a single republic but the immediate opportunity it provided for action.

A set of peculiarly American anxieties has spread across continents.

On Jean Strouse and the art of biography.

How did the U.S. government become involved in “adjudicating Indianness”?

Though Margaret Sanger and Mary Ware Dennett shared a mission, they took very different approaches. Their rivalry was political, sometimes even personal.

John Steinbeck based “The Grapes of Wrath” on Sanora Babb’s notes. But she was writing her own American epic.

On Percival Everett’s “James.”

Donald Trump’s victory will inevitably reopen the “fascism debate.” But does a populist whose appeal cuts across diverse groups truly fit the fascist profile?

Testing is necessary. The SAT’s creator is not.

The 20th-century movement to fix slouching questions the moral and political dimensions of addressing bad backs over wider public health concerns.

In the cultural wasteland of the Reagan era, they showed that a band could have mass appeal without being cheesy, or nostalgic, or playing hair metal.

From the French Revolution to January 6th, crowds have been heroized and vilified. Now they’re a field of study.

Conservatives love to bemoan their supposed status as oppressed minorities in universities. But the college campus has long been a key site for the Right.

Jean Strouse explores the relationship between the Anglo-Jewish Wertheimers and John Singer Sargent, who painted twelve portraits of them.

The Supreme Court’s deference to FDR during World War II resulted in unjustifiable ethical breaches.

Stephanie Mueller´s book sheds light on the percieved death of liberalism and the fear of corporations.

Some early progressives may have been advocates of states’ rights, but they misunderstood the philosophy of the American Founding.

Churchill weaponized her powers of seduction—but Pamela Harriman came into her own when she brought her glamour to Washington.

Charles Lindbergh’s ideology prefigured Donald Trump’s—and was rightly disgraced.

In "Counterrevolution," Melinda Cooper reads the 1970s economic crisis as an elite revolt rather than proof of the New Deal order’s unsustainability.

The novelist's aestheticizing impulse contrasts with the relentless seriousness of his observations and critiques of American society.

How an obsessive hatred of immigrants and people of color and deep-seated fears about the empowerment of women led to the Klan’s rule in Indiana.

What the failed Southern labor movement teaches us about the rightward shift in US politics.

From white supremacists to black activists, readers have sought moral legitimacy in Milton’s epic poem.

Carson pioneered a new style of late-night hosting—relaxed, improvisatory, risk-averse, and inscrutable.

A liberalism that divides humanity into a master class and a slave class deserves an asterisk as “white liberalism.”

In the wake of the September 11 attacks, evangelical American missionaries followed military tanks into Afghanistan and Iraq to convert Muslims.

Where conservatives may seek to conserve their democratic systems, reactionaries by their nature seek to weaken or abolish them.

John Rankin, minister and fierce abolitionist, is a man worth remembering in our moment.

Often, the proper scope of the First Amendment can be determined only by considering both text and context.

In assessing the rise of the global anti-democracy movement, the United States must look inward as well as outward.

Two new books explore the messy complexities of immigration—from the era of Lincoln to Irish New York.

Two recent books about our immigration system reveal its long history of exploiting vulnerable individuals for financial gain.

Contrary to both far right and mainstream center-left, there’s no epidemic of chosen childlessness.

Marion Gibson’s research rigorously traces the legal and human aspects of the trials through today.

Heather Cox Richardson argues that there are two Americas: one interested in equality, the other in hierarchy. But it's not that simple.