Excerpts

Washington’s policy-makers showed themselves more wicked and feckless than their Vietnam- and Iraq-era predecessors.

In 1984, only 18 American states denied that wives were the sexual property of their husbands.

Why black biography matters.

The pages of 1950s lifestyle magazines offer a glimpse of a time when childhood vaccines were anything but controversial.

“Bloody Sam” was born one hundred years ago this month.

Past presidents showed that removing millions of illegal aliens is achievable.

A new dual biography turns the lens on the towering architects of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

In the summer of 1842, young Abraham Lincoln’s razor-sharp wit almost got him into a whole heap of trouble.

Attempts to add Canada to the U.S. have gone poorly since the 1770s. Trump's rhetoric threatens a repeat.

Universal birthright citizenship was never the original intent.

The harrowing and heroic life of Marianne Faithfull, cheater of a thousand deaths and music history’s true avenging angel.

That’s not how separation of powers works under the U.S. Constitution.

Presidents can't shutter an agency Congress created by statute. Only Congress has this power.

Why do Americans idealize people who found businesses?

How a clerk on Ellis Island at the dawn of the 20th century documented discrimination through photography, and what that tells us about today’s malaise.

When the National Park Service removed trans people from the webpages of the Stonewall National Monument, it echoed one of the darkest chapters of the queer past.

The president is right to release the Kennedy files.

In a new book, Jeffrey Toobin makes a convincing case that Ford’s pardon of President Nixon set the stage for unchecked presidential power.

There are better models for President Trump than William McKinley. 

For centuries, theorists of liberal governance have worried about how emergencies can unfetter executive power. Trump has given those fears new urgency.

Levity and play — eerily combined with anxiety, terror, and deadly violence — shaped the identity and image of Early Republic militias.

For a century, Americans have embraced a punitive approach to addiction—one that has undermined treatment efforts.

“The conflicts of popular factions are the chief, if not the only inlets, of usurpation and Tyranny,” the first president wrote.

Jon Savage’s “The Secret Public” traces the influence of queer artists on a hostile culture.

An investigation of the US’s mass internment of Japanese Americans.

Once a nation of movers, the US has lost its “culture of mobility,” a new book argues. That’s been a disaster for housing affordability and economic progress.

During the Cold War, American and Soviet scientists embarked on an unprecedented quest to contact extraterrestrials.

Reformers in the Republican Party had been calling for a professional, merit-based civil service since shortly after the Civil War.

Kissinger warned: “This is no issue to face the world on. It looks like pure colonialism.”

Deferring to power and authority leads inevitably to autocracy.

The president says he wants to be peacemaker—but his heroes were warmongers.

How historians changed their approach, from the 1960s to the present.

The eighth president defined the future of politics.

The impact can linger not just for years but decades.

Though it may seem like a new topic of concern, the glaciated landscape of Greenland has floated in and out of American politics for decades.

Donald Trump’s model of political leadership? The cigar-chomping, baseball-bat swinging Meade Esposito.

King George and George Washington, featured in an upcoming exhibit.

The first time a president withheld funds for something approved by Congress, it led to the Impoundment Control Act. We’ll soon find out if that law has teeth.

Do judges have the power to enforce their rulings if the executive branch refuses to comply?

It’s Fort Bragg again. So why are Confederate heritage groups so mad?

At the time of the Civil War, many Americans revered the nation’s Founding Fathers, and both supporters and opponents of slavery recruited them to their sides.

You have two ears for a reason.

America’s only successful insurrection.

They’re horrid and useless. Why do pennies persist?

The U.S. was once the world’s most geographically mobile society. Now we’re stuck in place—and that’s a very big problem.

The history of deriving political meaning from Abraham Lincoln’s sexuality.

If RFK is confirmed, he is likely to fail for reasons similar to those for past political choices for the cabinet.

Libertarianism, fascism, and democracy.

Instead of compelling Canada to become an American state, the 1890 McKinley Tariff drove Canada into British hands.

Harold Ross founded The New Yorker as a comic weekly. A hundred years later, we’re doubling down on our commitment to the much richer publication it became.