Excerpts

It was J. Edgar Hoover who did more than any fire-breathing churchman to turn fearful white suburbanites into the crusaders of a renewed conservative backlash.

In a technological age, impassioned devotees renew an ancient maritime tradition.

The Chicago Boys and the tragedy of the Chilean coup.

A pop star’s road map to decadence.

Two new books attempt to grasp Thoreau’s seeming contradictions without reconciling them too easily.

Slips of paper with peculiar regional terms crossed the Atlantic to Oxford and into the pages of a 70-year lexicographical project.

And the grandmother who wouldn’t let him get away with it.

The Chicago school ruled supreme over economics—until recently.

Long before Greenland’s shifting ice threatened sea level rise, it doomed one of the military’s most audacious Cold War projects.

In 1866, the famous abolitionist laid out his vision for radically reshaping America in the pages of "The Atlantic."

A president’s infamous protestation 50 years ago during Watergate relied on an Old Norse term for things that take a turn.

“I’d assumed this practice was a manifestation of military decorum.”

Historian Ned Blackhawk’s new book stresses the importance of telling US history with a wider and more inclusive lens.

Making sense of anti-Semitism today requires examining Henry Ford’s outsize part in its origins.

Barely-disguised hostilities sometimes belied the rebels’ declared identity as the United States of America.

Government, wrote Alexander Hamilton, should substitute “the mild influence” of the law for “the violent and sanguinary agency of the sword.”

No, roving bands of medieval Scandinavians did not visit West Virginia. (So far as we know.)

In 1871, the Fisk University singers embarked on a tour that introduced white Americans to a Black sound that would reshape the nation.

Freedpeople and their advocates persuaded the nation to embrace schooling for all.

From Jefferson's viewpoint, Native peoples could claim a title to their homelands, but they did not own that land as private property.

James Longstreet became a champion of Reconstruction. Why?

“Gun Country” chronicles the transformation of guns from tangible weapons to ideological ammunition during the Cold War.

This simple technology changed the world.

Buckley’s seldom-acknowledged fluency in Spanish shaped his worldview—including his admiration for dictators from Spain to Chile and beyond.

Native minstrelsy and the American summer camp movement.

Revelations about secret government programs after Kennedy’s assassination increased the power of conspiracy theories.

A 1974 case gave the antiabortion movement a new playbook to whittle away abortion rights for poor women.

A treaty commitment to seat a delegate representing the Cherokee Nation in the House has gone unmet for two centuries.

A new book's insistence that the bomb was necessary to bring about Japan’s surrender is largely contradicted by its own evidence.

In 1840, William Henry Harrison was mocked for his presidential run at age 67 — 15 years younger than President Biden would be at the start of a second term.

No one should fear a history that asks a country to live up to its highest ideals.

Justifying civilian casualties has a long history.

He was one of the world’s most celebrated and beloved stars. Then his adopted country turned against him.

In 1901, a series of articles took a dim view of the era, and of the idea that all Americans ought to participate in the democratic process.

Johanna Fernández's new book on the Young Lords sheds light on the group's fight for clean streets and public health in 1960s New York City.

Gladys Knight and the Pips have always been more beloved by fans than by music historians, but they are essential to the evolution of soul.

Places and people in the struggle for Mexican American Civil Rights in San Antonio.

"African Founders" corrects some of the ideological uses of Black American history.

A 1945 union vs. studios battle set off broad right-wing hysteria—its lessons should resonate today.

John Brown and the Secret Six—the abolitionists who funded the raid on Harpers Ferry—confronted a question as old as America: When is violence justified?

The Historic American Building Survey's mission to photograph important architecture before its demolition.

For those in later years, the bell’s value lay not in its powerful sound, but in its visual representation.

What the autism diagnosis says about you.

Heroin, Aspirin, and The Spanish Flu.

One hundred years ago roadbuilder Edward J. Mehren wrote that streets, should be redesigned for the utility of motorists alone.

Some Native Americans chose to fight for the Southern cause.

To understand westward expansion, the Trail of Tears, the history of Manifest Destiny, and the impacts to Native Americans, one must understand its buildup.

Is the cost worth the payoff?

Attendees packed D.C.’s Griffith Stadium in 1951 for the wedding spectacular of gospel singer Rosetta Tharpe, who’s now the subject of a show at Ford's Theatre.

Abortion rights in the US were won in the 1970s thanks to militant feminist groups. As those rights are repealed, the fight must return to the streets.