Excerpts

In the 1920s, many in the U.S. fought for a living Constitution. Plenty of others wanted it dead.

In which John B. Calhoun begins to study the lifestyles of rodents, and the public listens.

On the lengths newspaper publishers took to reach new subscribers — and then drive them away — in the 1930s.

In the 1970s, some athletes began questioning the alliance between sports, conservative Christianity, and politics.

The very American racism of the notorious late Rabbi Meir Kahane.

When the 1930 Hays Code banned pregnancy in film, birds took over the business of birth.

The ruling class used false claims about white women’s sexual virtue to regulate sexuality. But the “white slavery” panic was also about race, class and labor.

Private insurance companies have long dominated the provision of social security in the United States, but resistance is growing.

Using film and advertising to sell capitalism and nationalism to immigrants in the early 20th century.

At universities, American Marxism has led to good scholarship, but it’s also encouraged hyper-specialization and the use of impenetrable jargon.

On the rise of the narcotic farm model, a radical reimagining of the nation’s approach to addiction.

Rains of blood and frogs, mysterious disappearances, objects in the sky: these were the anomalies that fascinated Charles Fort in his Book of the Damned.

Why rock overtook every other genre to define our understanding of America at war.

A new Smithsonian book reckons with the enduring legacies of slavery and capitalism.

During the Little Ice Age, Native North Americans devised whole new economic, social, and political structures.

Fire!! was a pathbreaking showcase for Black artists and writers “ready to emotionally serve a new day and a new generation.”

The postwar moment of a distinctive new American novel—Nabokov’s "Lolita"— is also the moment in which William Faulkner finally gained recognition.

On Robert Moses, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the culture of environmental waste.

Campus speech debates reveal a history of distorted narratives, balancing free speech, moral standards, and generational conflicts in U.S. universities.

The story of how Ed Carnes became a judge offers crucial lessons for those who hope to unwind the policies of mass incarceration.

In Wilson’s chivalric framework, women were required to be submissive precisely so that men could protect the weaker sex.

Considering the impact of the 1959 earthquake that shook our most famous national park.

Margaret Fuller and the first major work of American feminism.

A reading from 1920 on the fights that follow the 19th Amendment: “Now at last we can begin.”

The popular reception of thongs, bras, boy shorts and other intimate items.

Ryan White helped challenge existing understandings of the AIDS epidemic. But his story also reinforced arbitrary divisions between the guilty and the innocent.

On the origins of America's hegemonic foreign policy.

The Black Legion was a white supremacist fascist group headquartered in Lima, Ohio. Its worst deeds are lost to memory, but they shouldn’t be.

Progressive forces in US labor took a stand in solidarity with trade unionists facing murderous repression in El Salvador.

“Mary Mallon was a cook. And her story, first and foremost, is the story of a cook.”

The systematic post-war displacement of communities of color.

Remembering the lead-up to the 1979 Greensboro Massacre.

When video games went mainstream, the Pentagon realized their potential as a promotional tool, spending hundreds of millions of dollars on war-based games.

The same legal and cultural struggles will await the next critical infrastructural technology, and the next.

Any attempt to understand the complexities of American economic thought without considering the significant role of religious beliefs is incomplete.

On the transatlantic development of pilsners and lagers from Central Europe to the Americas.

Exploring the role mainline Protestants have played in promoting the idea of America as a Christian country.

“Allotment”—and its repercussions.

The little known history of 19th-century New York City.

An excerpt from the new book "Willie, Waylon, and the Boys."

Jonathan Schell’s account of the US military’s destruction of the village of Ben Suc in Vietnam laid bare the problem with many American interventions.

In contemporary publishing, novels fixated on the past rather than the present have garnered the most attention and prestige.

On the literary and cinematic legacy of white supremacy in the United States.

It was no coincidence that public school secularization and desegregation were happening, and failing, simultaneously.

A culture of reverence for the U.S. Constitution shields the founding document from criticism, despite its many shortcomings.

How an American arms dealer and a surplus of guns in Europe after World War II popularized gun ownership.

On the early history of New York City's northernmost borough.

On the independence of the Muscogee Nation.

On the making of a centuries-old obsession at the heart of American national identity.

How research helps us understand the past to create a better future.