Excerpts

Natasha Trethewey on experiencing a past not our own.

Lost letters between Jane Addams and her best friend leave questions for historians,

How the term "blog" came into being.

Remembering the civilian losses that have been overshadowed by heroic wartime feats.

Power and ambition in women are often hidden, buried, disguised, crushed, mocked, diminished, punished, or excoriated.

DC v. Heller recognized an individual right to possess a firearm under the Constitution. Here’s why the case was wrongly decided.

Why did I never recognize all the important and valuable stories my mother told me as "history"?

How can we understand the physical pain of others?

On reckoning with a fraught literary history.

How can we be sure the atrocities of the past will stay in the past?

I told her we were brought over the Rio Grande on a raft. I never called it a smuggling.

How a team of lawyers exposed lies about police violence.

A childhood lesson in the backseat of a 1973 Mustang.

Following in the footsteps of 20th century African Americans, Ethelene Whitmire experiences a 21st century transatlantic crossing.

White traders couldn’t have loaded their ships without help from Africans like my great-grandfather.

In uncovering the blackness of Peoples Temple, I began to better understand my community and the need to belong.

Reliving the events of 1998 was traumatic, yes—but also worth it, if it helps another young person avoid being “That Woman”-ed.

John McCain's harrowing account of nearly six years as a North Vietnamese prisoner of war, in his own words.

Reflections on live-tweeting the Great War.

He came to this country a refugee, and paid his debt forward.

I was raised to venerate Lee the principled patriot—but I want no association with Lee the defender of slavery.

Why a 47-year old anti-colonialist critique by Chilean dissidents may be newly relevant in the Trump era.

The decline of America’s rural health system and its toll on my family.

Gaming in the shadow Charlottesville's "Unite the Right" rally.

Olaudah Equiano, native of Africa, survivor of the Middle Passage and enslavement, tells his story.

When the government executed Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the welfare of their two boys was a secondary concern.

"The Best of Everything" outlined the dynamics and the costs of sexual harassment, decades before anyone talked openly about it.

The end of an era.

A personal investigation of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864.

What it was like to report on feminism for Playboy in 1969

I was sent to a camp at just 5 years old — but even then, they didn't separate children from families.

A historian turned novelist ponders the absence of women from America's historical archives.

A disenchanted San Franciscan rides west with a motley crew of pioneers.

It was a time when promoters were telling women in music: “You can’t put two women on the same bill. People won’t come.”

In researching his family's past, the author learns of his ancestors' efforts to thrive despite the confines of racial oppression.

You cannot have reconciliation without empathy. And you can’t have empathy unless people know the past pain that informs our present.

Finding a puzzle from the past in a family member’s basement.

A first-hand account of how intel gleaned from 'enhanced interrogation' was used to make the case for the 2003 invasion.

Reliving the Sinking of the Lusitania Through the Eyes of a Survivor-My Great-Grandmother

On history, race, and guns in America.

The origin story of an iconic novel.

Trump has called Andrew Jackson a "military hero and genius and a beloved president."

Posing as ‘John Barron,’ he claimed he owned most of his father’s real estate empire.

There are many theories about the origin of 420, but five guys named Waldo started it all.

How the National Civil Rights Museum has obscured the ongoing dispossession of African-Americans taking place in its shadow.

Revisiting the movies of my youth in the age of #MeToo.

In excavating the story of King’s visit to Harlem Hospital, I uncovered my grandfather’s own fight for civil rights.

Jeff Sessions tried to jail an activist couple trying to ensure the black residents of Alabama the right to vote.

Longtime tenant in the 165-year-old St. Denis building in New York City reflects on the building's history.

Author Jesmyn Ward on the racism “built into the bones” of the state where she grew up and is choosing to raise her children.