Excerpts

Separate areas with sofas, vanities, and even writing tables used to put the “rest” in women’s restrooms. Why were these spaces built, and why did they vanish?

The ruthless logic driving our economy can be traced back to 19th-century Palo Alto.

The haute beachwear known as the bikini was named after a string of islands turned into a nuclear wasteland by atomic bomb testing.

The author was monitored for his political activities, but also for being gay. The surveillance took a toll on him.

It’s not a flavor; it’s a vibe.

He marched with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma, Ala., after he witnessed atrocities while liberating Nazi death camps.

Franklin D. Roosevelt called the Evian Conference in France in 1938, as the Holocaust loomed. It remains “an indelible stain on American and world history.”

Computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum was there at the dawn of artificial intelligence– but he was also adamant that we must never confuse computers with humans.

Stowe’s novel shifted public opinion about slavery so dramatically that it has often been credited with fuelling the war that destroyed the institution.

Federal agencies awarded millions of dollars to scientific studies on Native American human remains, undermining the goals of tribes fighting for repatriation.

A collection of high school yearbooks from Cleveland captures the rise, fall, and uncertain future of the American middle class.

The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the U.S. came with censorship and obfuscation about the effects of the radiation on those who were exposed.

“If the public pool isn’t available and open, you don’t swim.”

Jim Crow terror, within and outside the law.

How a mob statute metastasized.

Rollins never wavered in his determination to get things right, and often that meant reinventing himself and, along the way, jazz as well.

It was the first Southern school to be integrated by court order, and the town reluctantly prepared to comply. Then an acolyte of Ezra Pound’s showed up.

A new book about Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing traces the path from Ronald Reagan’s antigovernment ideology to today’s radicalized right.

Henry Choate, 18, was killed, dragged from the back of a car through Columbia, Tenn., and his body was hanged at the Maury County Courthouse.

Watching 'Oppenheimer' with the author of a definitive account of the Manhattan Project.

Sean Mirski terms the Monroe Doctrine “revolutionary” in his impressively erudite "We May Dominate the World."

As America has transformed, so too has its famous footpath. Less than half the A.T. remains where it was originally laid.

Rival entrepreneurs took drastic steps to draw visitors away from Mammoth Cave in the early 20th century.

A recent biography dives into the choreographer's role as both an artist and figure of early American modernism.

Our ways of thinking about thinking are a product of postwar business culture.

Newly digitized journals reveal the life of Gouverneur Morris, the Constitution preamble writer, vocal opponent of slavery and disabled congressman.

What happens when radical historians write for the public.

The actual, and mythic, roles played by Irish immigrants in New York now fed the imaginations of the young Irish immigrants carving space for themselves in the 1980s.

Before Christopher Nolan’s "Oppenheimer," the world nearly got Ayn Rand’s "Tribute to Free Enterprise."

On the mobility controls faced by refugees, and who had the right to remain in American cities and states in the Early Republic.

“The sign has become a worldwide symbol of the Hollywood of the imagination, and it allows anyone who sees it to fill it with whatever meaning they want.”

On John Sturges’s “Bad Day at Black Rock” and Japanese America.

A Black cemetery by the site of the former Greenlawn Cemetery in Indianapolis is now a point of contention as the city plans to develop the area.

We must recognize the continued suffering and sacrifice of the Navajo that built the atomic era.

The country song that pits idyllic country life against the corruption of the city is a well-worn trope. Aldean's song reveals the dark heart of the tradition.

An iconic moment deeply shaped by Quaker beliefs on gender and equality.

Despite facing political headwinds and raising 'suspicion' among publishers, 'Reading Rainbow' introduced generations of American kids to books.

Prisoners not only supported the war effort in surprising ways during World War II, they fought and died in it.

Photographs of Ellis Island and the people who arrived there seeking a better life.

It took a shift in food culture for consumers to embrace the "noodle plant."

“I’ve learned, through hundreds of interviews and years of research, is that what crack really did was expose every vulnerability of society.”

On the complex relationship between Black Americans and the Black church.

The young man went to war and became a novelist. But did he ever really come back?

Civil rights activists failed to expel an all-white, segregationist delegation. But their efforts foreshadowed later milestones in the fight for equality

Some archaeologists argue it’s essential to preserve the history of lunar exploration. But would it represent a claim of U.S. sovereignty over the moon?

Witness to the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.

Delivering on the promise of the United States Postal Service.

In World War II, the US had a planned economy. Its principles were similar to MMT.

The Founding Fathers made startlingly progressive statements that didn’t make it into popular history.

Institutional reform is no match for pervasive structural inequality.