Excerpts

Dorothy Thompson finds a room of her own.

My whole life, my mother told me, ‘Always remember — you’re a Madison. You come from African slaves and a president.’

Jerry Mitchell revisits a dark episode in the struggle for civil rights.

What happened to the former Main Street of Syrian America.

From Ansel Adams to Rebecca Norris Webb, we trace the symbiotic relationship that the parks and photography have developed over 150 years.

A now-famous Puritan sermon was nothing special in its own day.

Don't let anyone tell you revolutionary history is boring.

Clare Beams on women's bodies and the power of names.

Until the mid-20th century, Oregon was perhaps the most racist place outside the southern states, possibly even of all the states.

Three decades ago, California was the launchpad for a virulent strain of anti-immigrant politics that soon spread nationwide.

A day-by-day account of the historic summit in Yalta, seventy-five years later.

A Pompous Doctor, a Racist Bureaucracy, and More. From the book "Black Death at the Golden Gate".

Ayelet Waldman on the landmark case O’Connor v. Donaldson.

It happens every year.

Although the British settlers imported Africans from the first as slaves, the earliest Virginians had yet to establish many basic rules regarding slavery.

Activists today are taking up Dr. King’s mantle and reviving the Poor People’s Campaign.

Contending with the orientalist fears and fantasies of a young nation.

An excerpt from a new book reveals how Disneyland came to be.

“The country cannot prosper if its cities are decaying.”

Mo Rocca on the struggle to depathologize homosexuality.

An excerpt from ‘We Return Fighting,’ a groundbreaking exploration of African American involvement in World War I.

When America’s first aerial cameraman met an infamous spirit photographer, the chemistry was explosive.

Expanding the radical promise of the American Revolution.

Lizabeth Cohen on the poverty and prosperity of the American city.

In the mid-20th century, Playboy wasn't just an erotic magazine. It was an architectural movement as well.

Frank Olson died in 1953, but it took decades for his family to get closer to the truth.

American revolutionaries had a far wider range of reasons for supporting rebellion than we often assume.

Emma Tenayuca and the San Antonio Pecan Shellers Strike of 1938.

The complicated privilege of forming a new constituency.

It was a struggle to even get the president to go to a game.

Looking to Louisa May Alcott's heroine for inspiration.

In 2002, still reeling from the dot-com crash, Google realized they’d been harvesting a very valuable raw material — your behavior.

The dark side of the medical industrial complex.

Charles Postel on the temperance crusade that galvanized the American women's movement.

Groundbreaking discoveries... but at what cost?

If you like hot chicken, perhaps you’d be interested in knowing where it comes from.

When the counterculture optimism receded, things got ugly.

How did the plain green lawn become the central landscaping feature in America, and what is the ecological cost?

"Inevitably, the age of national bootblacks and national oyster houses and national blacksmiths produced national history books."

The expansion of banks like Citigroup into Cuba, Haiti, and beyond reveal a story of capitalism built on blood, labor, and race.

In 19th-century America, rare old bones were a resource like any other.

Frank Malina's scientific dreams were as radical as his politics.

The context and aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision to kill the Civil Rights Act of 1875.

At what point does resistance become the only choice?

Most communities barely had a police force and citizens shared responsibility for enforcing laws. Then the car changed everything.

In the realism, the set pieces, the operatic music, Sergio Leone was pointing the way towards modern filmmaking.

The economics of childbirth under slavery.

From Bob Dylan to David Bowie to The Beatles, the legendary Beat writer’s influence reached beyond literature into music in surprising ways.

Their 1964 collaboration, "Nothing Personal," brought together aspects of American life and culture through photographs and text.

In an exclusive excerpt from his new book, 'Calder: The Conquest of Time,' Jed Perl reveals a hidden side of the artist.