Excerpts

What did German listeners hear when African American singers performed Schubert or Brahms?

The man who introduced mesmerism to the US was a slave-owner from Guadeloupe, where planters were experimenting with “magnetizing” their enslaved people.

Of the 270,000 photos commissioned to document the Great Depression, more than a third were “killed.” Explore the hole-punched archive and the void at its center.

On the devout abolitionists who excoriated American exceptionalism.

She’s been canonized as a hero of both mainstream literature and radical politics. Who was she really?

Understanding the meaning of the word "slut" in the Founders' vocabulary.

Did the iconic three-note sequence come from Stravinsky, the Muppets or somewhere else? Our writer set out to – dun, dun duuuun! – reveal the mystery.

James Blue’s film investigated the destruction of a Black neighborhood in Houston, but it is also a powerful self-interrogation.

Nothing could be more toxic to our ongoing effort to build a multiracial democracy than to cast any race as a perennial hero or villain.

Bringing to light the kinship among American wars—and, by extension, their true significance—requires situating them in a single historical framework.

Since their initial popularity during World War II, comic books have always been a medium for American counterculture and for nativism and empire. 

A new book explores California’s history through the experience of its Native peoples.

Using the congressional filibuster to prevent voting rights legislation isn't new. It has roots in the 19th century.

One hundred and twenty five years after the Supreme Court’s decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, there are still lessons to be gleaned from the case.

The Left once tried to own the legacy of America’s Bicentennial, but ran into ideological and structural roadblocks all too familiar today.

The original book is far more grisly than the beloved Disney classic—and has an unsettling message about humanity.

The white pine known as Tree 103 had lost the dewy glow that it had back in 1675.

The erasure of Black leaders from the most misunderstood period in American history.

How the 33rd president finagled his way to a post–White House fortune — and created a damaging precedent.

One of the last survivors of Boston’s Gangland War of the 1960s opens up about his notorious past.

A short history of a made-up constitutional doctrine that gives presidents too much power.

The girl sleuth, now the star of a TV show, has been eased into the canon. In the process, she’s shed the politics that motivated her creation.

Julian Fellowes' new series dramatizes the late 19th-century clash between New York City's old and new monied elite.

Mark Twain would be hopelessly out of favor with both wings of the modern duopoly.

A remarkable blues musician emerged from obscurity in 1959, but something about him just didn’t seem right.

They weren't about to let all that good camel hair go to waste.

A new book traces the tactics of groundbreaking lawyer Constance Baker Motley amid pivotal protests in Birmingham.

Amid all the suffering and death, friends and supporters arose in unexpected—often religious—places.

How the 'critical race theory' debate is crashing headlong into efforts to update social studies standards.

A correctional officer’s history of 19th century prisons and modern-day parallels. From Sing Sing to suicide watch, torture treads a fine line.

New maps can revive Cherokee place names in Southern Appalachia and restore crucial knowledge amid an environmental catastrophe.

A historian of global health explains how the lack of ICU beds in low-income communities is the result of government spending cuts dating back to the 1970s.

Untold stories of American diplomats who "lost" China.

U.S. government policies must continue to support physical and social infrastructure spending amid the continuing pandemic to avoid ‘stagflation’.

How a cartoon gamine midwifed the graphic novel—and the modern conservative movement.

World War I saw the availability of potash plummet, while its price doubled. The US found this critical component for multiple industries in Pacific kelp.

How come it's so hard to go in sweet privacy when you're out and about?

A collaborative project by legal scholars sets out to make visible the vast array of legal precedents based on cases involving enslaved people.

For a century, student activists have demanded a say in their schools.

A new book argues that mail service played a critical role in the U.S. government’s westward expansion and occupation of Native lands.

Pregnant and facing decades in prison, the mother of Tupac Shakur fought for her life — and triumphed — in the trial of the Panther 21.

Scholars are unraveling the myths surrounding the 1621 feast, which found the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag cementing a newly established alliance.

Refusing myths of joy and pain in slave narratives.

Abraham Lincoln proclaimed freedom for enslaved people in America on January 1, 1863. Today, we've annotated the Emancipation Proclamation for readers.

The ivory-billed woodpecker hasn't been seen for decades. The government is ready to declare it extinct—but at what cost?

When it seemed that steel had lost its gleam with American consumers, the industry turned to marketing to make it shine again.

“The social revolution which is taking place in this country is not an isolated, detached phenomenon. It is part of a worldwide revolution that is taking place.”

The King holiday is more than a time for reflection. It’s really a time for provocation.

When states ban antiracism history from schools, they're disavowing what King stood for.

In World War I, the Victory Garden movement encouraged people to grow their own food to conserve home-front supplies. But kids' gardens had planted the roots.