Excerpts

Circumstances in which people are feeling extreme disorientation are potent breeding grounds for people who are willing to exploit it in moments of crisis.

On February 26, 1775, residents of Salem, Massachusetts, banded together to force the British to withdraw from their town in Leslie’s Retreat.

What were we thinking, buying so many of these fragile, messy, remarkable ovals? Get used to high egg prices, it was a miracle they were low in the first place.

Public education is meant to be a great equalizer. That’s why Trump wants to do undo it.

Rich Benjamin’s new book reveals a shared spirit between the world’s first Black republic and the United States.

After the alt-right march on Charlottesville, Matt Lewis pointed out the existence of a “libertarian to alt-right pipeline."

In contrast to feudal society, where everyone, lord or serf, remained rooted to the land, and words were ‘passed on'.

The scene at the 1964 Republican National Convention, when Barry Goldwater was nominated and black Republicans’ worst fears about their party were confirmed.

In 1964, Commonweal supported the Vietnam War. In 1966, the magazine condemned it in blunt, theological terms. What changed?

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a man of letters, in possession of a goodly number of books, must be in need of a ladder.

In the ’50s, America declared science an ‘endless frontier.’ We may be reaching the end of it.

Edmond Dédé’s “Morgiane” shows how diversity initiatives can promote works of real cultural value.

If world leaders had been clearer about the sanctions Putin would face, they might have deterred his invasion of Ukraine.

Enslaved families were regularly separated​. A new history chronicles the tenacious efforts of the emancipated to be reunited​ with their loved ones.

George Dale's crusade against the Ku Klux Klan.

On the early career of the actor-cum-politician who changed America.

The Trump administration’s attacks on DEI are aimed at reversing the civil rights movement.

As a child in postings around the world, the author witnessed the agency’s complex relationship with American empire—and with autocrats everywhere.

Understand that if Trump succeeds the result will not be the harmless resurrection of a quaint jurisprudential artifact.

Plutocrats, anarchists, and what Henry James grasped about the romance of revolution.

Why should a country want or need allies? President Donald Trump and his followers seem to disdain the idea. So did George Washington.

When the white-supremacist group terrorized the South during Reconstruction, many people denied that it even existed.

Trump's second administration is 'unprecedented' to some, but historians find parallels in ancient Rome, Nazi Germany, and Latin American dictatorship.

The Radical Republican oversaw federal spending at the dawn of Reconstruction. How did his support for Black equality affect his leadership in the House?

It may sound counterintuitive, but Ken Burns’ version of U.S. history actually has quite a bit in common with Trump’s version.

A global network of maritime archeologists is excavating slave shipwrecks—and reconnecting Black communities to the deep.

Facing History & Ourselves, known for its model lessons on genocide, has angered staff and disappointed teachers by refusing to provide resources about Gaza.

Democrats’ cultural aversion to power has cleaved an opening for Trump.

Throughout the entire history of left-wing organizing in the United States, the building of institutions of political education has been key.

Trump, Xi Jinping, and the tariffs.

The Black Panther Party illustrated how communal love can be a powerful agent for change and empowerment.

The curious case of social psychology.

New books on the War in Afghanistan endeavor to tell the realities of occupation and the "war on terror."

What Jimmy Breslin and Langston Hughes failed to imagine.

How Trump's migration-as-invasion theory might serve as a pretext for claiming vast presidential powers and upending constitutional norms.

Conservatives might be tempted to hold up Reagan as representative of a nobler era. They’d be wrong.

On Walter Isaacson’s biographical project.

USAID grants may have cracked constitutional spending limits.

Estimates say that millions of dollars and tens of thousands of acres of land throughout New England were given to soldiers who scalped Native Americans.

Video has become our dominant cultural medium, yet we lack reliable archives for the audiovisual record.

How a top-secret satellite surveillance program accidentally documented climate change.

Can speech be free when billionaires buy influence on campus?

Although the West has long tolerated forced expulsions when convenient, its postwar framework at least nominally rejected them. Now the US is endorsing it.

Newly declassified documents reveal how Israel operated under the noses of U.S. inspectors.

Introducing “How the System Works,” a series on the hidden mechanisms that support modern life.

The civil rights leader’s lone poem, written from prison, reveals his love of language — and his quest for truth.

Black Marxist thought emphasizes the centrality of capitalism to racial oppression and the destructiveness of that oppression for all workers.

In the 19th century, John Conness defended the 14th Amendment and shut down proto-Trumpians.

Which one was Abraham Lincoln?

A Black transgender woman’s testimony helped ratify the 14th Amendment. Then conservatives began attacking her identity.