Excerpts

Often forgotten today, the black populists and their acts of cross-racial solidarity terrified the planter class, who responded with violence and Jim Crow laws.

What is the Federal Reserve, and who put it in charge? Is there no other way to fight inflation? Just what the hell is going on here?

Stacy Fahrenthold compares Donald Trump's Muslim ban to that of Woodrow Wilson back in 1918.

At every stop, he enthralled audiences with a device called a “stereopticon.”

A nineteenth-century twist on love at first sight.

Republicans have long made a sport of deriding Washington, portraying it as a dysfunctional, crime-infested “swamp."

But the backstory was all-American.

Meet the self-help author who wanted to teach corporate America how to think.

The state removed the educational marker after Concord Republicans complained about Elizabeth Gurley Flynn's communist ties.

How did today's bipartisan understanding of immigration—as an intolerable threat that justifies any means to stop it—take hold?

Luther is part myth, mascot, and mantle, symbolizing the hopes and sanctifying the heroes of American evangelicalism.

Why were in-flight meals so much better in the past?

How America gave up on housing equality.

In the post-war era, a wave of American young evangelists flocked to Europe to claim the continent for Christ. And the exchanges went both ways.

A brief scholarly overview to understand the contours of white backlashes, their historical impact, and the ways they shape the world we inherit.

Two movies, 'Easy Rider' and 'Alice's Restaurant,' reveal the ideals of counterculture and act as vehicles for social commentary.

Conversion therapies have never been about providing medical or mental care. Instead, they have been a tool to eradicate LGBTQ activism, culture and people.

Popular accounts often trace the origins of forced penal labor to the post-Civil War South. But a vast system of forced penal labor existed in the antebellum North.

A pastor's son reflects on his evangelical father's beliefs regarding politics in the pulpit.

A new, Pulitzer Prize–winning opera adapts the memoir of Omar ibn Said, an African Muslim who spent much of his life enslaved in North Carolina.

Historian Barbara J. Fields explains why you can't understand what happened in 1619 without understanding what happened in 1607.

Since we live in an age in which silence is not only criminal but suicidal, I have been making as much noise as I can.

We now know a great deal about the crimes he committed while in office. But we know little about his four decades with Kissinger Associates.

A new history examines the lost promise and fierce persecution of the IWW.

Through the tragedies and uncertainties of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln may have found a deepened connection to his religious faith.

A revered Supreme Court ruling protected the robust debate vital to democracy—but made it harder to constrain misinformation. Can we do better?

Harry Truman used antisemitic slurs in private. But his surprise decision 75 years ago to recognize Israel, launching a fierce alliance, was a long time coming.

Native Americans demand accountability for a federal policy that aimed to erase Indigenous culture.

Stretching back to Hollywood’s Golden Age, writers and many others in the industry have fought for their rights as workers.

The disclosure of Billy Graham's recommendation of war crimes did not exicte any commotion.

Who disbanded Iraq’s army and de-Baathified its bureaucracy?

The saxophonist Albert Ayler revolutionized the avant-garde jazz scene, drastically altering notions of what noises qualified as music.

A writer of haunting, uncategorizable songs, she once seemed poised for runaway fame. But only decades after she disappeared has her music found an audience.

The United States’ destruction of Iraq remains the worst international crime of our time. Its perpetrators remain free and its horrors are buried.

A new account sheds light on the Ford administration’s war against Sen. Frank Church and his landmark effort to rein in a lawless intelligence community.

The American commercialized version of Mother's Day isn't what the founder intended.

How Lincoln's administration financed the Civil War and transformed the nation's decentralized economy into the global juggernaut of the postwar centuries.

A conversation on Du Bois' perspective on empire and democracy, the development of his anti-imperial thought, and his vision for transnational solidarity.

The long history undergirding our harsh bipartisan migration policies.

Alex Haley’s transcript of his famous 'Playboy' interview with Martin Luther King Jr. does not match what was published.

On the music’s African-American tributaries, its unpredictable politics, country radio’s woman problem, and working on Ken Burns’ forthcoming doc.

An unlikely pair of Southern California businessmen paved the way for the sushi revolution in Los Angeles, upending American dining — and their own lives.

We revere the man and revile the strategy, but King knew what he was doing.

The Washington state law provides low-interest loans for down payments for those harmed by racially restrictive covenants.

For 50 years, this bizarre act was one of the Atlantic City's biggest attractions.

Does recognizing the importance of conservatism in the twentieth century make us see the arc of American history in a new way?

As ‘The Jerry Springer Show’ climbed the ratings ladder, the censorship bleep became a star of the show.

Fifty years ago, the Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Organization invited the American Indian Movement to Pine Ridge and reignited a resistance that has not left.

Slave labor, overcrowding, and unmarked graves — the buried history of Atlanta City Prison Farm from the 1950s to 1990s shows it’s no place of honor.

Conflict over centralization, political power, and national identity were not unique occurrences in the Americas during the middle decades of the 19th century.