Excerpts

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.

Sometimes an accused witch was believed to have had a dog who would do her bidding; to others, the devil appeared in the form of a dog.

The tariffs he keeps babbling about didn’t make that decade great. They helped usher in a depression.

Do pop culture interventions in presidential elections make a difference?

A truly Christian postliberalism would imagine and enact an alternative modernity with a different standard of progress.

The media narrative used to discredit urban rebellions as violent betrayals of the civil rights movement has been attached to protests ever since.

After World War II, canned foods became more and more common, along with a smorgasbord of pre-prepared, processed foods such as SpaghettiOs.

Rising on the lands of an ancient agricultural system, Memphis has a long history of negotiating social conflict and change while singing the blues.

In Winn Parish, an ancient salt dome has sustained life for centuries.

In 1956, The New York Times, dismayed by wayward polls in the prior presidential race, sent teams of reporters across the nation to better gauge public opinion.

While the Citizens United case created major shifts in campaign contributions and spending, an earlier decision played a bigger role in campaign finance laws.

The Black Legion was a white supremacist fascist group headquartered in Lima, Ohio. Its worst deeds are lost to memory, but they shouldn’t be.

Progressive forces in US labor took a stand in solidarity with trade unionists facing murderous repression in El Salvador.

A new work of nonfiction revives a history that some would sooner see forgotten.

What can be learned from how people responded to false alarms about nuclear war in the late 1950s?

Oscar Hartzell convinced thousands of Americans that they could get a piece of the Sir Francis Drake estate—a multibillion-dollar inheritance that didn’t exist.

Two Carvers and the fight for fair desegregation.

Why did the U.S. allow its national communications markets to be run by expansive monopolists?

Matt Stoller charts the shifts in American attitudes toward corporate consolidation.

Clinton’s role in decoupling the Democratic Party from mainstream labor, first in Arkansas and then nationally, had dire consequences.

Because Martin Van Buren was an unsuccessful president, his more significant contributions to the nation’s political life have also been obscured.

The driving question of scholarship should be “what is the evidence for your argument?” Instead, it has become “whose side are you on?”

“Mary Mallon was a cook. And her story, first and foremost, is the story of a cook.”

Jeremy Dauber's new book explores the themes and origins of the American horror genre.

Rouse reveals the hidden queer histories of suffragists like Alice Morgan Wright, who balanced activism with private, erased relationships.

Over a 100 years ago, white mobs organized by white elites and planters in Arkansas swarmed into rural Black sharecropping communities in the Arkansas Delta.

The systematic post-war displacement of communities of color.

Remembering the lead-up to the 1979 Greensboro Massacre.

Henry Hale Bliss’ death presaged the battle between the 20th-century automobile lobby and walkers in U.S. cities.

How Ibn Khaldun influenced the president and a generation of conservative tax policy.

The Trump campaign is signaling that it intends to make the U.S. a "Christian nation." Here's what that idea looked like in history.

A collection of political sermons attributed to a crooked machine boss is a handy reference for New York City’s current political chaos.

Why headlines blaming extreme weather on climate change don’t hold up, the peril of catastrophism, and the case that we’re actually safer than ever before.

Donald Trump's four-year tenure in the White House revealed extraordinary fissures in American society but left little doubt that he is a unique figure.

When Puerto Ricans go to the polls, they can express their choice for several status options for the island.

The history behind the country's role as a key American ally that also maintains warm relations with Iran and others.

The overlooked Creek War set the tone for America to come.

History reveals that even weakening storms do catastrophic damage when they hit mountainous regions.

Forest fires of 1910 sparked a media-driven fire exclusion policy, which has arguably worsened today's "fire problem."

Convicting Vermont’s first governor.

George Eliot refused to stereotype the rural working class. Her outlook would serve us well today.

MLB’s focus on wealthier fans stands in stark contrast to rhetoric about the ballpark that had long called it a site of egalitarian intermixing.

Despite the Chinese Exclusion Act, about 300,000 Chinese gained admission to the U.S. between 1882 and 1943. How did they do it?

For residents, organizers, and onlookers, neighborhoods can be a window for witnessing and making sense of history.