Excerpts

In the 19th century, civil wars tore apart the US, Mexico and Argentina. Then came democracy’s fight against reaction.

Prohibition—and its newly created underground economy—changed the way women lived, worked, and socialized.

A reminder of how tricky it is to balance protecting transparency and freedom of association.

Alicia Puglionesi explores the damage white supremacy did to Native Americans and their land.

Popular accounts of the Holocaust overlook its irrationality and often disordered violence.

Without a shared civic narrative – the pursuit of liberal democratic self-government – the rival regional cultures of the United States agree on very little.

The 26th president once demanded that military personnel be able to walk 50 miles in 20 hours. I set off on an ill-fated mission to see if I could do it myself.

Bruce Kuklick traces the meaning of the term “fascist” from its origins to the present day and how it has, over the years, gradually lost its coherence.

Without smart regulation, price competition turns into a race to the bottom.

Searching for the first, in the 1860s.

In narrowly focusing on Leonard Bernstein’s tortured personal life, "Maestro" fails to explore his tortured artistic life.

Belief that schools must teach moral values is older than public schools themselves. But whose morals?

Knowing I come from people who lived hard lives and endured terrible things is difficult. Knowing that I come from someone who ruined lives haunts me.

Over the past year, two prominent historians have invited readers to rethink the master narrative of US history.

Media coverage of the civil rights movement is a reminder that the deification of King has skewed public memory.

Matter-of-fact accounting of the legal mechanism of slavery provides insight into American history and the country’s fraught present.

A compelling history of the fertile 1950s-’60s firmament surveys Lower Manhattan’s Coenties Slip.

No coconut, chocolate, or mint in sight.

“This isn’t about being for one group or against another. It’s about basic human rights.”

Right-wing radio stations are tied to an increase in conservatism among listeners.

The 1886 blizzard imperiled settlers and left fields of dead cattle in its wake.

A pair of lawsuits claim that courts were a strong check against federal agency power in early America, but history shows otherwise.

How the territory became the frontline of the battle for abolition.

American elites accepted the economic theory of "comparative advantage" mainly because it justified their geopolitical agenda.

The indoor suburban shopping center is a special kind of abandoned place.

In the 1890s, boxing went from lower class brawling to upper class show of masculinity.

John Mitchell's renowned 1755 map was a part of King George III's extensive collection of topographical charts that helped shape American designs on Canada.

The documentary short “Catwoman vs. the White House” reconstructs an unexpected moment of activism during the Vietnam War.

A memoir of the Family Stone.

The economist’s lifelong pugilism wasn’t in spite of his success—it may have been the key to it.

He called black people "an ignorant and inferior race," and it gets worse.

How freedmen navigated an unofficially segregated Methodist Episcopal Church.

Recovering the long-overlooked significance of the “hillbilly highway” in the US, with implications for labor history as well as US history broadly.

This online forum sponsored by the Journal of the Civil War Era features 9 essays and a roundtable on the future of Reconstruction Studies.

When murder won’t rest in peace.

Robert Frost’s correspondence on teaching, writing and having fun.

Although major U.S. newspapers hosted thousands of opinion pieces on Israel-Palestine over 50 years, hardly any were actually written by Palestinians.

What 220 years of Haitian independence means for how we tell the story of abolition and the development of human rights around the world.

How "Behold a Pale Horse" found its way to the Wu-Tang Clan, Mobb Deep’s Prodigy, Busta Rhymes, Tupac Shakur, NAS, and more.

Tom Wolfe was no radical.

Pneumatic tubes offered a leap forward in business and communications, in the office and across the city.

Asian American artists who performed for primarily white audiences in the 1930s and ’40s both challenged and solidified racial boundaries in the United States.

Almanacs from the Civil War era reveal how two sides of an embattled nation used data from the natural world to legitimize their claims to statehood.

When Civil War reenacting began, it was largely the province of folks who wished to uphold the Old South myth. Now, a more diverse group of reenactors is pushing back.

The legacy of Operation Pedro Pan, a plan to save Cuban children from communist indoctrination by leaving their families and resettling in the United States.

Maybe what we need is not just a new form of poultry farming but a complete revolution in how we relate to meat.

Leon Uris's bestselling book "Exodus" portrayed the founding of the state of Israel in terms many Americans could relate to.

The archival trove chronicles the extreme measures administrators took to ensure Black sharecroppers did not receive treatment for the venereal disease.

Baby brokers often tricked Indigenous Mayan women into giving up newborns; kidnappers took others. International adoption is now seen as a cover for war crimes.

The assumptions of white priority and white domination suffuse every chapter and every theme of the thousands of textbooks that have blanketed the schools of our country.