Excerpts

Caribbean islands as U.S. territories within an American empire has since the start sparked fierce debates.

Arlington House’s transformations mirror our own.

Lin­coln’s interactions with black Americans provides a valuable resource for understanding a more farseeing Lincoln than the voices of despair have described.

Debates about what should be America’s role in the world are not new—neither is the slogan “America First.”

Railroads and photography, developed largely in parallel and brought about drastic changes in how people understood time and space.

In 1968, Chicago grabbed the eyes of the world when fifteen thousand Vietnam antiwar protesters vowed to shut down the National Democratic Convention.

The ‘Napalm Girl’ photo is much more than powerful evidence of war’s indiscriminate effects on civilians.

Spotless bathrooms used to be a crucial selling point for gas stations.

The Rapid City flood helped define pervasive environmental injustice and catalyze action.

Mississippi makes a move to confront a shameful episode from the past.

The Quaker spiritual journey, often invisible due to its silent, humble and individual nature, is illustrated in this map.

How one-third of “The Watergate Three” got written out of journalism history.

And Congress should claw it back.

Though Helen Keller’s childhood triumph over the difficulties of her deaf-blindness are known, many are unaware of her second act as an activist and orator.

How a phrase tied to authenticity and resistance sometimes just dishes out entertainment.

The government’s failure to fully invest in higher education created our current crisis.

In the early twentieth century, immigrant tenant organizers made rent control laws a reality. Today, working-class New Yorkers still fight for housing justice.

Popular early U.S. tales depicted Muslims as menacing figures in faraway lands or cardboard moral paragons.

How Democrats like Zell Miller and Bill Clinton exacerbated inequality in education

The gap in education equality is holding America back.

Koch argues that the Age of Revolution, known mainly as the period between the American Revolution and the Revolutions of 1848, continued all the way to 1865.

A conversation with historian Donna Murch about the past, present, and future of Black radical organizing.

Despite a thriving queer community in Washington, the 1950s State Department fired gay and lesbian workers en masse.

In the 1960s, Chicago’s white neighborhoods didn’t want Mexican Americans moving in. But one determined real estate broker changed everything.

Shibutani, Haruo Najima, and Tomika Shibutani reported that the vaccination lines stretched as long as 200 yards. “The conditions were atrocious.”

Finally embracing teachers' original vision could help us rethink education after covid.

What prioritizing white happiness tells us about race and K-12 education.

According to John Wesley Powell, outside of the Pacific Northwest, the arid lands of the west could not be farmed without irrigation.

John Stuart Mill was an unusual man who lived an extraordinary life devoted to a set of problems that once again dominate political thought in the 21st century.

When a DJ called on listeners to destroy disco records in a Chicago stadium, things turned nasty.

The left's Pyrrhic victory in the culture wars.

Minnie Bruce Pratt shares her own story as a lesbian within the South, and the activism that occurred and the activism still ongoing.

Fifty years on, Nick Ut’s Pulitzer Prize–winning photograph, “Napalm Girl,” still has the power to shock. But can a picture change the world?

Edward Spicer's writings indicate an awareness of the deeply unjust circumstances that Japanese Americans found themselves in within Japanese internment camps.

A new history of Detroit’s struggles for clean air and water argues that municipal debt and austerity have furthered an ongoing environmental catastrophe.

Waverly Woodson treated at least 200 injured men on D-Day, despite being injured, himself.

News of the invasion spread quickly that morning. Phil Stern captured a city still processing the news—but his photos were lost for decades

A 1944 dispatch from Normandy.

This isn’t the first time the U.S. Postal Service has played a role in curbing women’s reproductive rights.

People have come up with a range of ingenious, harebrained, and sometimes grim but often remarkable ways to stay cool during a summer scorcher.

Among the nearly half a million atomic bomb victims and survivors were thousands of Japanese American citizens of the United States.

Soul City was a boondoggle—not a story of lost or forgotten roads tragically not taken.

What the modern world owes slavery. (It’s more than back wages).

A new book examines explores the ways that an uncritical celebration of “good” gays and “good” gayness can cause harm.

Harvard made headlines by announcing that it would devote $100 million to remedying “the harms of the university’s ties to slavery.”

On Annie Payson Call’s advice to tired nineteenth-century workers.

A historical Black burial ground, reclaimed.

A new book examines how the US government funded the growth of — and delegated governance to — the nonprofit sector.

As the war in Ukraine worsens, there’s little debate about Western policy choices. This is a mistake.

From the light-bulb dress to galvanic belts, electrified clothing offered a way to experience and conquer a mysterious and vigorous force.