Excerpts

The history of race has animated a highly contentious, sometimes fractious debate among scholars.

Two preachers who shaped American Christianity diverged sharply on whether to protest or exploit slavery, with consequences that persist today.

What the recent debates over presentism get wrong.

As climate change increases the severity of extreme weather events, the nation’s legacy is at risk.

At a time when the US was divided on questions of gender, Alice de Rivera decided that she was fed up with her lousy high school.

On the religion, segregation, the civil rights movement, violence, and hypocrisy.

It’s popularly remembered as a moderate demonstration. In fact, it was the culmination of a mass, working-class movement against racial and economic injustice.

Bartholomew’s legacy demonstrates with particular clarity that planning is never truly neutral; value judgments are always embedded in engineers' objectives.

The Civil Rights Movement was a radical struggle against Jim Crow tyranny whose early foot soldiers were Communists and labor militants.

Masks and social distancing are largely gone, but just as consequentially, a less visible pandemic intervention is ending: universally free school meals.

It’s only by acknowledging the roots of identity politics in the emancipatory movements of the past that we can begin the work of formulating an alternative.

Coleman’s approach to improvisation shook twentieth-century jazz. It was a revolutionary idea that sounded like a folk song.

Because cycling was an important mode of transportation for agricultural workers and a popular competitive sport, police saw it as a way to target immigrants.

The legislature established a committee last year to “promote patriotic education.” Drafts of one of its pamphlets reveal an effort to sanitize history.

Three veterans of the civil rights movement fought segregation in St. Augustine, Fla., enduring violence and racism in America’s oldest city.

In 19th-century New England, rule-breaking Yankees were a source of national pride.

The historical narrative surrounding the wartime confinement of ethnic Japanese in the United States grows ever more complex.

“They’ll tell you it was abortion. Sorry, the historical record’s clear: It was segregation.”

Felix Frankfurter warned that politicians, not the courts, should make policy.

The "Pleasure Gardens" of the 18th Century captivated the public with a heady mix of fantasy and vice.

How a re-creation of its most famous battle helped erase the meaning of the Civil War.

How America’s infatuation with World War II has eroded our conscience.

Venture into the Montana eatery, once a gambling den and opium repository, that still draws a crowd.

The sweet-yet-somber treat was the star of extravagant 19th-century funeral feasts.

Housing costs are skyrocketing. History offers a path forward.

An eight-year campaign to slash the agency’s budget has left it understaffed and hamstrung. That's good news for corporations and the wealthy.

Our racial history is complex and important, but debates today are eliding entire chapters of it.

Civic-minded Midwesterners realized that network access would someday be a necessity, and worked to make it available to everyone, no strings attached.

Zoar's citizens left religious persecution in Germany and created a utopian community on the Erie Canal.

Conservatives dream of returning to a world where private charity fulfilled all public needs. But that world never existed, and we're better for it.

The new Army bra is the latest chapter in a longtime partnership.

An essay by the president of the American Historical Association generated a firestorm of criticism — but got some things right.

Was coining a heinous offense that underminined public trust in currency, or a creative solution to the shortage of specie across the Atlantic world?

Public heath and race at the US-Mexico border.

The sinister history of fumigating “foreign” books.

The once-glamorous casinos and hotels have become a gilded ghost town.

To understand why evangelicals vote Republican, we shouldn’t focus just on Falwell; we need to look at a century or more of evangelical political culture.

Ambrose Bierce deviated from the refined eeriness of English-style ghost stories for his haunting descriptions of fateful coincidence and horrific revelation.

Before the establishment of the modern FDA, anti-regulation attitudes ruled the world of food.

In response to the build-up of Soviet nuclear missiles on Cuba, JFK ordered a quarantine of the island and military surveillance missions.

Beyond “Hamilton”: How the friends turned into political rivals, and finally into mortal enemies.

An Iraqi soldier recalls fleeing through hell at the end of the first gulf war.

The annual worker’s holiday in the rest of the world is May Day. Why not here?

If you think that the banjo can teach us nothing about American history, Southern culture and modern race relations, then you certainly don't know the banjo.

A new history shows how neoliberalism took power during a period of crisis, which leaves open the question of whether it can be forced out as a result of one.

Solidarity between men and women workers is crucial to advancing the cause of workers in America.

"A People’s History" is bad history, albeit gilded with virtuous intentions.

In the 19th century, puddings were as popular and widespread as pasta dishes are today.

The famous historian was also an antiwar activist who went to North Vietnam in 1968 to accompany three captured US pilots back home.

A bracing and eccentric epic of espionage and hippos.