Excerpts

And why so many people remember the tale so differently.

Video games, violence and the enduring allure of the vigilante hero.

The scene at the 1964 Republican National Convention, when Barry Goldwater was nominated and black Republicans’ worst fears about their party were confirmed.

If world leaders had been clearer about the sanctions Putin would face, they might have deterred his invasion of Ukraine.

On the early career of the actor-cum-politician who changed America.

Video has become our dominant cultural medium, yet we lack reliable archives for the audiovisual record.

The Puritan origins of modern ideas about migration.

Max Gordon, Prohibition, and the transformative creation of the Village Vanguard.

In the summer of 1842, young Abraham Lincoln’s razor-sharp wit almost got him into a whole heap of trouble.

Levity and play — eerily combined with anxiety, terror, and deadly violence — shaped the identity and image of Early Republic militias.

How historians changed their approach, from the 1960s to the present.

The U.S. was once the world’s most geographically mobile society. Now we’re stuck in place—and that’s a very big problem.

A narrative not of brain drain but of Black aspiration.

On Pierrepoint B. Noyes, H.G. Wells, and the “Superweapons” of early science-fiction.

In memory of Martin Luther King Jr, a look back on his funeral.

Depictions of Antietam couldn’t possible capture the magnitude of the battle’s horror.

In the 1970s, a crop of books purporting to provide a scientific basis for gender inequality met sharp criticism from figures like Gould.

On John Huggins, Angela Y. Davis, and the complex history of an oft-misunderstood political movement.

The life of John Andrew Jackson — and the vacillating richness and scarcity of the archive.

On the ongoing legal struggle for educational and racial equality across the United States.

On civilians’ opinion of killing civilians by air during World War II.

On the 1860 Republican National Convention in Chicago.

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.