Excerpts

The transformation of tobacco and cannabis into early modern global obsessions.

Divisions in society and religion that still exist today resulted from the "Great Awakenings" of the 18th Century.

For as long as women have battled for equitable political representation in America, those battles have been defined by images.

It's about the satirical tradition of 'going there.'

Jonathan Alter on Jimmy Carter ditching politics for truth.

A rally at Faneuil Hall in support of the Fourteenth Amendment and congressional investigation of southern disfranchisement.

From Claudio Saunt's Cundill Prize-nominated "Unworthy Republic."

From Vincent Brown's Cundill Prize-nominated "Tacky’s Revolt."

Jane Dailey considers the power of the law to reinforce racism.

When poetry met power in January, 1961.

Devon Price wonders why we equate sloth with evil.

Gwenyth Loose on the women who defied all expectations.

David Zucchino on the white supremacist plot to take over Wilmington, North Carolina.

The rise and fall of Perry Miller.

The systematic mass murder and assault of accused communists in Indonesia by US-backed military forces has left a mark on the country and the world.

Joe Biden was once a New Deal Democrat. Then he “evolved” and starting backing decades of Republican plans to cut Medicare and Social Security.

Gustavus Stadler on Nora Belle Guthrie's battle with Huntington's Disease.

How Mexico—and the fugitives who went there—helped make freedom possible in America.

"Rethinking Rufus" argues that enslaved black men were sexually violated by both white men and white women.

Over the first half of the 20th century, the movement galvanized groups throughout the Americas who helped inaugurate what we think of today as global feminism.

Douglas Brinkley offers a brief history of political listicles.

A madman versus a crook? Unexpected twists? Fake news? Welcome to the election of 1800.

The “Middle Class Nation” and “American Exceptionalism” found each other late, and under specific circumstances.

An excerpt from a new book that explores the threat of made-up monsters in the age of imperial conquest.

Jon Sternfeld on collective memory and history as instruction.

Langston Hughes, "poet laureate of Harlem," dreamed of an America that lived up to its ideals.

The polarized dialogue over Vietnam and the civil rights movement convinced Ginsberg that America was teetering on the precipice of a fall.

Jill Filipovic on the generation that changed everything.

Reform was framed as a way of removing “politics” from postal affairs and giving more autonomy to postal management. In time, it would prove to do neither.

Monsters have always patrolled the margins of the map. By their very strangeness, they determined the boundaries of the regular world.

Examining the life of Father Divine, the black preacher who called for the destruction of racial separation and claimed to be God.

Remembering "Hiroshima," the story that changed everything.

Miles Harvey on the life and times of James J. Strang.

Revisiting John Hersey's groundbreaking "Hiroshima."

Studying Hurricane Katrina as a discrete event is studying a fiction.

An excerpt from a new graphic biography of Jack Kirby, the "King of Comics."

For Baldwin, the past had always been bent in service of a lie. Could a true story be told?

Robin D.G. Kelley on the predecessors to Antifa.

J. Chester Johnson on the Elaine Race Massacre of 1919.

Martin Luther King Jr. proposed a fix for America’s poisoned soul: ending the Vietnam War.

Watching disease spread and kill on slave ships.

Decades after the war, a group of prosecutors and historians discovered the truth about a mysterious SS training camp in occupied Poland.

Visiting the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis.

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.