Excerpts

Curated stories from around the web.
New on Bunk
Cartoon of babies in petrie dishes.

A Long Incubation

It took hundreds of years of research to develop in-vitro fertilization or IVF.
John F. Kennedy standing at a microphone, holding notes.

The Warning About Trump That JFK Never Got to Deliver

In his undelivered final speech, Kennedy warned the world against ‘voices preaching doctrines wholly unrelated to reality.’
A courtroom or public civic room full of people, with white and black people sitting on opposite sides of a railing.

When Tribal Nations Expel Their Black Members

Clashes between sovereignty rights and civil rights reveal an uncomfortable and complicated story about race and belonging in America.
Photograph of cars bumper to bumper on a highway, USA (year unknown, likely during 1970s energy crisis)

How Congress Planned To Solve The 1970s Energy Crisis

Representative Mo Udall's ambitious strategy to wean the United States off fossil fuels by the year 2000.
JFK accompanies a man and woman walking through the wreckage of a tornado.
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How Farmers Convinced Scientists to Take Climate Change Seriously

Rural Americans once led the fight to link extreme weather like Hurricane Harvey and human activity. What changed?
LBJ at his desk writing.
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Foreign Powers Interfered in the 1968 Election. Why Didn’t LBJ Stop Them?

Was his disdain for his vice president greater than his desire for Democrats to win?
Alaskan coastal town at the foot of snowy mountains.
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How the Federal Government Became Responsible for Disaster Relief

The Alaska earthquake that put Washington in charge of natural disasters.
Image of a person being affected by chemical weapons.

Why We Don’t Use Chemical Weapons

World War I exposed the world to the horror of gas attacks. But why do we draw the line there when other methods of killing prove so much more effective?
Political cartoon by Thomas Nast, depicting Grover Cleveland listening to election news on a telephone.

Mark Twain Eavesdrops

"I touched the bell and this talk ensued."
Cartoon drawing of George Washington reading the Declaration of Independence to his militia army.

What You Might Not Know About the Declaration of Independence

July 4th celebrates the signing of the Declaration of Independence, but we don’t even have the original!
Drawing of a drag ball in the Civil War.

Drag Balls of the Civil War

Queerness has always existed — even on the Civil War battlefield.
Nuclear weapon mushroom cloud

Mythologizing the Bomb

The beauty of the atomic scientists' calculations hid from them the truly Faustian contract they scratched their names to.
Trump and his cabinet sitting around a conference table.
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Why the Power Elite Continues to Dominate American Politics

Presidents of both parties stock their Cabinets with corporate leaders.
Photo from the 1940s depicting a golfer lining up a shot while three others look on.

Fairness on the Fairway: Public Golf Courses and Civil Rights

Organized movements to bring racial equality to the golf course have been part of the sport since the early 1900s.

When Big Oil Was "The Great Vampire Squid" Wrapped Around America

Robert Engler's award-winning 1955 investigation into the oil industry.
Rep. Ocasio-Cortez speaks to an audience in front of a Green New Deal sign.
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The Federal Government Subsidized the Carbon Economy. Now it Should Subsidize a Greener One.

Why the Green New Deal fits right in with America’s energy economy.
Screen shots of PBS NewsHour anchors with title cards about conflicts in Angola, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Afghanistan.
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“Burning with a Deadly Heat”

PBS NewsHour coverage of the hot wars of the Cold War.
U.S. President George W. Bush holds a news conference in the briefing room of the White House in Washington July 15, 2008.

George W. Bush's White House "Lost" 22 Million Emails

The outrage and press coverage was nothing compared with that surrounding Hillary Clinton's emails.
The cover of the book "This Earthly Frame," depicting clouds swirling around the US Capitol dome.

The Struggle to Make the United States Secular

How progressives came to think that any recognition of Christianity by a public institution violates others’ rights.
Eugene Sandow lifting a dumbell.

Buff Boys of America: Eugen Sandow and Jesus

Under the influence of Muscular Christianity, Jesus transformed into a muscle-bound Aryan, saving souls through strength and masculinity.
Mitch McConnell smiling.

How the Conservative War on Campaign Finance Regulation Hastened Roe's Downfall

How the movement to end legal abortion became intertwined with a different conservative pet project.
Prosecutor Linda Fairstein, left, during a news conference in New York on March 26, 1988. Seated at the table next to her are District Attorney Robert Morgenthau and Ellen Levin, mother of Jennifer Levin, who was murdered in 1986. (Charles Wenzelberg/AP)
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Linda Fairstein is Under Fire for the Central Park Five. But Another Part of Her Career Deserves Greater Scrutiny

By targeting sex workers, she enacted policies that harmed the most vulnerable women.
Douglas Engelbart wearing an earpiece, sitting at a computer, in 1968.

The Future, Revisited: “The Mother of All Demos” at 50

How the ’60s counterculture gave birth to personal computers and the vast tech industry that builds and sells them.
Painting of George Washington.
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How George Washington Held Officials Accountable for Border Violence

And what Congress can learn from his efforts.
Photo of three airplanes on a runway, one exploding.

D.B. Cooper, The Changing Nature of Hijackings and the Foundation For Today's Airport Security

Cooper’s hijacking-as-extortion plot captured the public’s imagination – and inspired a copycat crime wave.
Donald Duck with a U.S. military hat

How Disney Propaganda Shaped Life on the Home Front During WWII

A traveling exhibition traces how the animation studio mobilized to support the Allied war effort.
Billboard saying "Welcome to California Where Abortion is Safe and Still Legal"
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What Pre-Civil War History Tells Us About the Coming Abortion Battle

Fights over fugitive slave laws pitted states against each other and showcased the risks of the federal government not supporting liberty.
A modern adaption of Howard Chandler Christy’s 1940 painting, “Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States,” with contemporary players on both sides of the judicial contest.

How The Federalist Society is Helping Conservatives Win The Judicial War

It isn’t just about Supreme Court picks. The group’s impact on the law goes much deeper.
Store window selling shirts and ties mentioning the "Nixon Squeeze"

The Burglaries Were Never the Story

The historical insights of one era have been lost to the journalistic instincts of another.
The Bullion Mine, Virginia City, Nevada, in a village at the foot of a mountain.

Gold Diggers on Camera

Creating the myth of the gold rush with the help of daguerreotypists.
Andrew Jackson, standing

Trump Wasn’t the First President to Confront the Supreme Court – and Back Down

The story of President Andrew Jackson and Worcester v. Georgia, decided in 1832.
Congresswomen Omar, Pressley, Ocasio-Cortez, and Tlaib.
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The Radical Roots of ‘the Squad’

How Mickey Leland and the Congressional Black Caucus paved the way for today's progressive politics.
Robert Welch, founder of the John Birch Society, standing next to a portrait of the group's namesake, Captain John Morrison Birch.

December 9, 1958: The John Birch Society Is Founded

“Together with other ‘know nothing’ organizations scattered through the country, it represents a basic, continuing phenomenon in American society.”
Trump displaying a table of reciprocal tariffs.
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The Dangers of President Trump’s Favorite Word — Reciprocity

The Gilded Age roots of Trump's trade philosophy.
Painting of Santa Claus giving a sword to a Confederate cavalryman next to a dinosaur.

What Is Revisionist History?

What is revisionist history--and is it dangerous?
The Burr-Hamilton Duel, 1804, Peter Newark American Pictures / Bridgeman Images .

Dueling: The Violence of Gentlemen

What honor required of men.
Black and white photo of John Muir sitting on a rock

John Muir's Literary Science

The writings of the Scottish-born American naturalist John Muir are known for their scientific acumen as well as for their rhapsodic flights.

Bittersweet Harvest

The long and brutal journey of the yam.
Sign that reads "Instructions to all persons of Japanese ancestry living in the following area"

Memory Work: Reading and Writing Japanese American Incarceration

What new possibilities might arise if we were to consider history as ongoing memory work, rather than a set narrative of progress or as singular “truth”?
A collection of flags, games, and printed matter from the Civil War

Patriotism and Consumerism in the Civil War

For a burgeoning consumer society, store-bought flags and bonnets offered proof that commercialism could go hand in hand with heartfelt emotion.
In 1972, Ray Womack, wearing an “Explo 72" shirt, begins a 900-mile run to Dallas, for an evangelical rally.
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An Evangelical Youth Event Could Offer Clues About the Movement’s Future

TOGETHER ’22 aims to mimic EXPLO ’72 — which provided hints about the rising conservative evangelical tide.
A demonstrator outside the Supreme Court as the court rules in the Dobbs v. Women’s Health Organization abortion case on June 24, 2022.
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Overturning Roe Could Threaten Rights Conservatives Hold Dear

Parental rights stem from the same liberty that the Supreme Court just began rolling back.
Picture of Senator Raphael G. Warnock

Sen. Raphael G. Warnock Remembers How the Police Killing of Amadou Diallo Sparked His Activism

"It didn’t make much sense for us to be talking about justice in the classroom if we weren’t willing to get in the struggle in the streets."
Compilation of images: signs at the 1963 March on Washington, poster about censorship, confederate flag, KKK members in hoods, drawing of overseer wielding whip, classroom with portrait of Lincoln on the wall.

Behind the Critical Race Theory Crackdown

Racial blamelessness and the politics of forgetting.
Painting of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin while writing the Declaration of Independence.

How the Complete Meaning of July Fourth Is Slipping Away

John Adams would not be happy to see what Independence Day has become.
Illustration of a gavel by Vahram Muradyan

Why Do Americans Have So Few Rights?

How we came to rely on the courts, instead of the democratic process, for justice.
Book cover of "The Chinese Question The Gold Rushes and Global Politics"

Who Digs the Mines?

A new book recognizes the global character of Asian exclusion.
Illustrations on the cover and inside of the book “Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls or War on the White Slave Trade," depicting poor woman behind bars and a rich woman dining with a man.
partner

The Supreme Court Letting States Mandate Morals Will End Badly

History shows laws will end up as weapons deployed in discriminatory ways to curtail freedom.
A plaque in Brooklyn commemorating Robert E. Lee.

It’s Hard to Get Rid of a Confederate Memorial in New York City

At least one monument has come down this summer, but two streets in Brooklyn have proved difficult to rename.
"Fleet" Walker (middle row, far left) poses with Oberlin College's first varsity baseball team in 1881. Walker went on to become the first African American major leaguer.

The First African American Major League Baseball Player Isn’t Who You Think

As the country celebrates Jackie Robinson Day, let’s consider the career of Fleet Walker.
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