Excerpts

Decisions made now could shape the next 100 years.

How the dream of air conditioning turned into the dark future of climate change.

Rather than viewing strikes as a last-resort bargaining tactic, the labor movement must embrace them as engines of political transformation.

A journalistic view of Martin Luther King Jr.'s life, work, and representation in American society.

There were more government shutdowns under Ronald Reagan than under every president since, combined. But some were as short as a few hours.

The famed opera has been criticized for its racist portrayals of Asian-Americans.

Cable TV's backers sold the technology as a boon to democracy, but embraced a business model that chased niche audiences.

Internal documents show what the oil giant said publicly was very different from how it approached the issue privately in the Tillerson era.

To Heather Cox Richardson, the battle for our history is the battle for our democracy. And we may be nearing the endgame.

Municipal governments today hold around $4 trillion in outstanding debt. The growing costs of simply servicing their debt is cannibalizing their annual budgets.

A pair of minor league clubs are asking the court to reverse the league’s lucrative 101-year-old antitrust exemption.

The “Barbenheimer” double feature captures the dawn of our imperiled era.

Conservative Christians are out to restore their historical legal privileges.

There have always been two Americas. One based in religious zeal, mythology, and inequality; and one grounded in rule of the people and the pursuit of equality.

The reissue of “Tim” shows both the prescience and the unrealized promise of the beloved band.

In the last decade, some graffiti writers have moved from outlaw taggers to sought-after artists.

The Max series makes a radical argument for what constitutes American history.

In the late 1970s, mysterious circular patterns started showing up in farm fields.

The New Deal brought Black voters over to the Democratic Party, but was marred by racial inequality.

Tocqueville understood how constitutional review, without meaningful checks, could enable judicial despotism.

A biography of the towers that became "bane as well as boon to lower Manhattan."

The winding story of how a trove of 8,000 of the poet’s family objects were saved.

An exploration of the family stories, Southern territory, and distortions of memory that Lucinda Williams' songwriting evokes.

Shelby Foote, failed novelist and closeted member of the Tribe, turned the Civil War into a masterpiece of American literature.

Wielding Holocaust memory to make America look good is an American tradition.

The age of optimism that lasted in the US from the 1940s to the 1970s looked, basically, like a car.

On the 50th anniversary of "The Jewish Catalog."

America’s 37th president tried to save America’s Russia policy in the 1990s.

Fifty years ago, parents united to get the far-right John Birch Society out of their schools.

Machine-graded bubble sheets are the defining feature of American schools. Today’s kindergartners may never have to fill one out.

Gloria Steinem on the making of America's first feminist publication.

How Cold War liberalism abandoned the vocabulary of hope—and how we still live with the consequences.

There are certainly good grounds to criticize Cold War liberalism. But Samuel Moyn's new book, like similar critiques, has a classic baby-bathwater problem.

Apples no one has ever tasted are still out in the wild. Dave Benscoter, a retired FBI agent, has spent a decade searching for these 100-year-old heirlooms.

Sly and the Family Stone suggested new possibilities in music and life—until it all fell apart.

Like the spies themselves, the image we have of something is often what gets us in trouble.

A deep dive into the historical context and changing meanings of a time-honored term.

Finding the forgotten and racialized landscape of Civil War memory.

The rules were supposed to preserve my community. Instead they are slowly cutting people out of it.

Labor radicals played a crucial role in organizing the struggles to topple gender hierarchies, and should serve as an inspiration for labor feminists today.

Published by the American Anti-Slavery Society, this single 77 by 55 centimeter sheet tells multiple stories in both text and illustration.

In 1873, greed, speculation and overinvestment in railroads sparked a financial crisis that sank the U.S. into more than five years of misery.

Over 136,000 GM workers participated in the strike in Flint, Michigan that became known as 'the strike heard round the world.'

An exhibition exploring the connections between the environment and social justice, using maps and visual materials.

On the history of whaling and how we understand energy consumption.

And it's all thanks to this mother-daughter dream team.

"Texas Jailhouse Music" explores a time when Texas prisons promoted rehabilitation through a wildly successful radio show.

Why women civil rights organizers marginalized at this event, and how that affects our collective memory of the struggle.

Today’s strikers are seeking to renew the broadly shared prosperity that earlier UAW work stoppages created.

By thinking big, Shawn Fain is summoning memories of Walter Reuther and the autoworkers’ union’s finest hour.