Excerpts

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 As those rights are repealed, the fight must return to the streets.

One thing’s for sure: The CIA doesn’t want you to know.

Almost 175 years after the Gold Rush began, Californians are left holding the bag for thousands of abandoned mines.

During the New Deal, the U.S. knew that economic recovery depended upon housing.

The G.I. Bill created a prosperous middle class that was altogether too white.

The 1898 Wilmington massacre overthrew the elected government in the majority-Black city, killed many Black residents and torched a Black-run newspaper.

Who was that traveler? And what did she signify to the poet?

The right has had qualms about universities since the 1930s.

In the 1920s, electricity monopolies survived an antitrust investigation because they had won over the public.

While condemning terrorism should be a no-brainer, "moral clarity" has not guaranteed sound U.S. counterterrorism policy.

Biden continues a tradition of building fences at the US-Mexico border that long precedes Donald Trump.

The Richmond Bread Riot broke out during the Civil War when working-class women in the South became fed up with food shortages.

The relationship between the DJ and his MC derived from a Jamaican “toasting” tradition and its related “sound clash” culture.

These groups are invoking ACT UP's legacy to push for further deregulation of the FDA. Here's why they're wrong.

How the album pays homage to hip-hop's mythical and martial arts origins.

On ramps, xonacatl, skunk eggs and more.

It is impossible to talk about the blues and country without talking about race, authenticity, and contemporary America’s relationship to its past.

Originalism is all the rage on the right, but a gun case at the Supreme Court is exposing its absurdity—even to the conservative justices.

History shows that activists can win statewide fights—but that the strategy might be unsustainable long-term.

At the height of George W. Bush’s War on Terror, Jimmy Carter had the courage to call out Israel for its human rights abuses.

A conversation with the longtime director about “Rustin,” growing up in Kentucky, and putting on a show.

During the Great Depression, St. Louis's Funsten Nut Factory was racially divided. But Black workers went on strike — and got their white coworkers to join them.

Environmental radicalism, left and right.

The proto-Taylorist methods of worker control Charles Babbage encoded into his calculating engines have origins in plantation management.

Touring the American soul.

Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman helped devise Pinochet's economic agenda and endorsed the brutal repression that was needed to force it through.

A conversation about "the gains and pains of America’s exercise obsession."

Nationalism, not postmodernism, is the fount of today's politics of recognition.

Log drivers once steered loose timber on rivers across America before railroad expansion put such shepherds out of work.

The actual history of New Deal policies provides little evidence that it was a rollicking success.

My dad grew up in Robert Moses’s New York City. His story is a testament to how urban planning shapes countless lives.

The civil-rights mastermind was sidelined by his own movement. Now he’s back in the spotlight. What can we learn from his strategies of resistance?

A visit to the old neighborhood.

How cable TV transformed politics—and how politics transformed cable TV.

Inmates at this bucolic but brutal prison have long been singing the blues to sustain themselves, and a new compilation of gospel songs continues the legacy.

In the heart of New York City, a centuries-long hunt for Revolutionary War–era gold.

More than 3,800 formerly enslaved people are buried in the military cemetery.

Sylvia Mendez’s role in setting the stage for Brown v. Board of Education has been forgotten and overlooked.

The nineteenth-century establishment of mid-Atlantic coal mines and canals gave America its first taste of abundant fossil fuel energy.

In a century-long tradition, students at the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania came together in solidarity to combat illness among their members.

How the FBI's doomed attempt to stop criminal activity conducted via mobile phones shaped the regime of ubiquitous backdoor surveillance under which we live today.

The environmental crisis isn’t the result of the “tragedy of the commons.” It’s the result of the commons’ theft and privatization for profit.

A century ago, cars killed pedestrians and cyclists in record numbers. As traffic deaths rise again, it’s time to remember how US cities once responded to this safety crisis.

The famed economist’s “shareholder theory” provides corporations with too much room to violate consumers’ rights and trust.

The new UAW faces new challenges, but bears some distinct resemblances to the old.

The Supreme Court opened the door to challenges on school prayer, 60 years after a landmark ruling in Engel v. Vitale.

Modernization theory and the delusions of American strategy.

Rare footage of the woman magician's act captures her magnetic stage presence and range of tricks.

Meet these slippery, mischievous reflections of our anxieties about technology.

For decades, Americans have argued over the icon’s legacy. But his archives show that he had his own plans.