Excerpts

The National Archives museum is backsliding into a sanitized retelling of American history. Don’t assume truth will prevail.

Journalists helped to pioneer what would eventually result in our mobile world.

State efforts to usurp local government power over schools, elections, and police tend to diminish Black political power.

Leaders in the 20th-century South faced violence and death for promoting voting rights; systemic failure enabled their killers to go unpunished.

When did endorsements become pro forma, anyway? And what do they even do?

Marion Gibson’s research rigorously traces the legal and human aspects of the trials through today.

In 1973, a young biologist hatched a plan to bring a charismatic seabird back to Maine. Over five decades, it would revolutionize seabird restoration.

The terrific new doc “San Juan Hill” chronicles the 1960s land grab that gave the Metropolitan Opera a home, while scattering longtime residents.

Haitians are caught between the grip of violent gangs and the messy legacies of foreign intervention.

Black people see what is happening to Palestinians, and many feel the tug of the familiar in their heart.

“Spectropia” demystified the techniques used by mediums who claimed they could speak to the dead, revealing the “absurd follies of Spiritualism.”

Margaret Fuller and the first major work of American feminism.

How the Taylor Swift of her age captivated New Orleans.

It’s time to care for the community—not cleanse it.

The vibes right now are very "Texas Chain Saw Massacre."

A reading from 1920 on the fights that follow the 19th Amendment: “Now at last we can begin.”

How incarcerated people have become separated from American society.

From ancient Native American trails to billion-year-old rocks, take an in-depth look at the thousands of years of history housed inside this iconic park.

Donald Trump wants the ideology of William McKinley and Gilded Age Republicanism, but with a totally different social base. It won’t work.

From 1942's "Cat People" to cerebral jolts in "Hereditary" and "Get Out," this cinematic scare tactic still shocks.

The popular reception of thongs, bras, boy shorts and other intimate items.

The number of MoMA-CIA crossovers is highly suspicious, to say the least.

It’s important to understand why some workers might be motivated to weather scorn, rejection and even violence from their peers.

How deathly rituals affect our perception of personal dignity.

William Bradford Huie’s newly released research notes show he suspected more than two men tortured and killed Emmett Till, but suggest that he left it out.

Heather Cox Richardson argues that there are two Americas: one interested in equality, the other in hierarchy. But it's not that simple.

Ryan White helped challenge existing understandings of the AIDS epidemic. But his story also reinforced arbitrary divisions between the guilty and the innocent.

The U.S. military operated a Grand Turk missile tracking station for 30 years, with limited local benefits, highlighting American expansionism's impact.

The success of the movie ‘The Silent Scream,’ made by onetime abortionist Bernard Nathanson, continues to influence the pro-life narrative.

A public uprising forced Boston to prioritize fighting smallpox over the economy in 1792.

William Rehnquist went from a lonely dissenter to an institutionalist chief—and his opinions are all the rage among the court’s current conservatives.

The gradual decline of the fade-out in popular music.

The weapons infrastructure of the Cold War is now getting rented out on Airbnb or memorialized as patriotic kitsch.

The election of 1801 offers a first-hand example of how current events can offer historians new perspectives on the past.

Inside the weird synergies that launched the videogaming industry—and made the Pentagon fantasies in Call of Duty its stock in trade.

Tales of strange, nocturnal people haunt the region—and so do theories about who they were, from a lost Welsh "tribe" to aliens.

From the ruins of the Spanish Civil War to air force bases in Texas.

Maine passed its first abortion statute in 1840, not long after the pardon of Dr. Call. Could there be a connection?

On the origins of America's hegemonic foreign policy.

“The Bookshop” tells the story of American bookstores in thirteen types. Its true subject is not how bookstore can survive, but how they should be.

John Andrew Jackson spent a night at Harriet Beecher Stowe’s home as he fled north. Why do so few traces of his visit remain?

Fighting over the legacy of a conservative hero in the era of Trump.

While letting justices serve during “good behavior” was designed to encourage impartiality, it now tends to promote the opposite effect.

Two striking reminders of the game-changing potential of great speed and its limited value unless accompanied by other essential skills.

As George Gallup pioneered new methods of surveying the public, The Nation opined on their dangers—and democratic possibilities.

Make one of President George Washington's favorite cocktails.

It just might be the great American art form. You can thank the residents of Salem for that.

John Dickinson's contributions to the Constitution continue to reverberate today.

How the younger brother of the famous general set out to destroy the scourge of monopoly power.

Researchers measured lawmakers’ wealth and found that those whose Southern ancestors owned slaves before abolition have a higher net worth today.