Excerpts

When the organization first defended Nazis, it did so for practical reasons.

See how Washington Irving, Clement Clarke Moore and Thomas Nast made Santa the merriest man in Manhattan.

The Smithsonian museum’s collection of human remains contains dozens of brains from vulnerable Washington, D.C., residents, many taken without consent.

Many servicemen became addicted to opioids prescribed during the war. Society viewed their dependency as a lack of manliness.

How the resignation of a Carter era ambassador still echoes today.

"Big Mama" does what all blues greats do: she telegraphs endurance and force to whomever out there in TV land might need it. This is blues perfection.

On the terror that filled the void left by the retreat of federal authority in the South.

For 70 years, the U.S. has failed to achieve faster trains—because it refuses to do what it takes to make them work.

Though his younger brother Isaac Bashevis Singer eventually eclipsed him, Israel Joshua Singer excelled at showing characters buffeted by the tides of history.

The Navy’s operations against Barbary corsairs at the start of the 19th century provide salient lessons for operating in the gray zone today.

Retro was not the antithesis to the sub- and countercultural experiments of the 1960s, it grew directly out of them.

Among America's political elite, 5 living presidents, 2 Supreme Court justices, 11 governors, and 100 legislators have ancestors who enslaved Black people.

Most of the Klan’s victims were African American, but many other groups have been targeted during the hate group’s century and a half of history.

The flag of Bikini Atoll looks a lot like the American flag. It has the same red and white stripes. The resemblance is intentional.

What the tech pioneer can, and can’t, teach us.

Confronting segregation as Black urbanites' fight for access and equality in northern cinemas.

In "Ordinary Notes," Sharpe considers Black culture “in all of its shade and depth and glow.”

What were Americans' immediate responses to "A Christmas Carol," and how did Dickens' reading tours and eventual death reshape its meaning?

Even as the civil rights revolution brought significant gains to Black residents of cities, the story was very different in rural places.

Who wants to watch a show whose characters never make real moral choices?

New analysis confirms precolonial lineage of this extinct breed, once kept for their wool.

Contrary to popular belief, the 1773 protest opposed a tax break, not a tax hike. And it didn't immediately unify the colonies against the British.

What roiled the mind of Nebraska poet John Neihardt with whom Black Elk, the iconic Lakota holy man, shared his story?

For a full understanding of any historical period, we must read the literature written while its events were still unfolding.

The Exorcist in 1973 and 2023.

This new biopic about the socialist organizer Bayard Rustin stops at the March on Washington. What is it leaving out?

Opposition to British policy was justified. Destroying 342 crates of tea worth nearly $2 million in today’s money wasn’t.

Attacks on private property enraged Colonial leaders and the British public, hardening positions and ruling out compromise.

Marine archaeologists are beginning to understand what really happened to Captain Santa's ill-fated ship, nicknamed the Christmas Tree Boat.

A bold new photographic project asks modern-day Americans to recreate portraits of their 19th-century ancestors in painstakingly accurate fashion.

The 1993 film also inspired its director, Steven Spielberg, to establish a foundation that preserves survivors' stories.

Politicians have often sought to remedy educational panic with remedies that do more harm than good.

How fascists and authoritarians have used antisemitic conspiracy theories to harm Jewish communities and undermine democracy.

The term is 80 years old. Everyone is still fighting over its meaning.

The troubled history of the famous poinsettia plant.

Wednesday night will bring a brilliant meteor shower, but the far bigger Leonid shower 190 years ago had people believing Judgment Day was at hand.

An agency spokesperson claimed that the move had nothing to do with politics. Internal emails show otherwise.

Controversial artworks are flashpoints when artistic freedom and religious sensitivities collide.

The effects of the 1991 mass shooting at a Luby's in Killeen can still be felt today—in the legislature and on our streets.

In 1950, the Sullivinian Institute was created to push the boundaries of psychoanalysis. By 1980, its therapists and patients had become a small paramilitary.

A microsyllabus on the history of the U.S.-Mexico border, refugees, and deportation.

Fulbright created an exchange program which sends Americans abroad and advances international engagement and mutual understanding. Yet it’s not his only legacy.

The Kingdom of the Happy Land represents just one of many Black placemaking efforts in Appalachia. We must not forget it.

On December 11, 1981, El Salvador’s US-backed soldiers carried out one of the worst massacres in the history of the Americas at El Mozote.

While many Americans gushed about the effectiveness of the ‘Destruction of the Tea,’ others thought it went too far.

California cannabis breeding is at a crossroads.

Judge the author of the “Feminine Mystique” not by the gains she made, but by her experience.

The law, passed in a frenzy after the First World War, is a disaster. Why is it still on the books?

America’s feminists felt confident when the Equal Rights Amendment was put before Congress 100 years ago this week. For a century, it’s failed to be enacted.

An unlikely alliance in antebellum America.