Excerpts

In the 1960s, white Appalachian workers attempted to put down roots in Chicago by building an integrated model neighborhood called Hank Williams Village.

Martin Luther King’s words are available publicly — for a price.

One war, in one city, Philadelphia, and the fate of the men, women, and children left behind as collateral damage in the wake of conflict.

Conservative “populism” has never been about egalitarianism, but about mobilizing support for traditional hierarchies.

The great grand strategist of the Cold War believed he failed in his most important task.

The investigative committee singles out Trump for his role in the attack. As prosecution, the report is thorough. But as historical explanation it’s a mess.

A form of entertainment and outgrowth of desperation, self-styled rainmakers allowed the powerless people of the Great Plains to seemingly take action.

White American empire transformed Minnesota into an agricultural and extraction-based economy that uprooted Dakota from their traditional homelands.

The most important third party in the history of American politics is one you may never have heard of before.

A Black Power radical, a Navy veteran, and the story behind the most boring channel on television.

A look at socialism’s far-reaching influence on American thought.

From the machine politicians in La Villita to the radicals in Pilsen, Mexican Chicagoans have played a central role in defining their city. 

The hidden story of a 180-year-old union-busting spy agency.

Why does the government have the power to break massive union strikes? Part of the story is a history of conciliatory railway unionism.

Black refugees’ journey from Virginia to Boston after the Civil War.

The remains of more than 100,000 Native Americans are held by prestigious U.S. institutions, despite a 1990 law meant to return them to tribal nations.

For all the clouds of publicity, the dream machine is actually a craft business. Have we asked too much of it?

Great-power competition demands persuasion, not coercion.

The intertwined history of education, history, and patriotism in the United States.

The use of ‘y'all’ has often been seen as vulgar, low-class and uncultured. That’s starting to change.

The Supreme Court has watered down the policy’s core justification: justice.

A new history of the environmental movement places too much emphasis on famous figures like Rachel Carson and shies away from confronting failures.

The House speaker fight was eerily reminiscent of 1923 — but the differences between the two will drive what comes next.

The album was once king. Now it’s the live show.

Mr. Shakespeare's team oversaw ads and on-air events that reflected the rising power of television as a political tool.

If fact-checking could fix us, we’d be a utopia by now.

A new book examines military manuals as a genre to understand what armed counter-revolutionaries think of as the right way to do what they do.

The Pointer Sisters, the Great Migration, and the soul of country.

The Framers would have never tolerated debt-limit brinkmanship. It’s time to put this terrible idea on trial.

Archaeology and genetics can’t yet agree on when humans first arrived in the Americas. That’s good science, and here’s why.

A century ago, a false accusation sparked the destruction of the Florida community.

The history of speakership contests underscores the corner Kevin McCarthy is painted into and the corner any Republican House leader is likely to face.

The battle is worth winning for Kevin McCarthy — and could reshape the Republican Party.

One hundred years ago, a strong leader brought House rebels to the table to elect a speaker. Can McCarthy do the same?

When historians concede to discuss the past with the terms of the present, they abandon the skill set that makes them historians.

Restoring the term “burnout” to its roots in landlord arson puts the dispossession of poor city dwellers at its center.

Gregory Ain wanted to create social housing in Los Angeles. Dogged by the FBI, his hope for more egalitarian architecture never came to be.

Segregation, separatism, and the history of black barbershops.

Kevin McCarthy's struggling bid to win the speakership has nothing on the epic 1856 contest that pitted abolitionists against proslavery members of Congress.

The tendency to divorce racial disparities from economic inequality has a long liberal lineage.

In Jill Lepore's "These Truths," ideas produce other ideas. But new ideas arise from thinking humans, not from other ideas.

The sight of the flag on January 6, 2021 has aroused curiosity and criticism. Missing, however, is the multiplicity of its symbolism to Vietnamese Americans.

Syracuse University Geography professor Matt Huber discusses the 1930s oil boom in the American southwest, and the military might brought in to control it.

160 years ago, a similarly fractured GOP took months to settle on a speaker.

On the value of the discipline and its applications.

When the federal government began to claim a stake in the public’s physical fitness, and the origins of the Presidential Physical Fitness Test.

Or maybe it was the cigars that gave us this New Year's Eve staple.

Jedediah Purdy's new book examines why the U.S. has continuously failed to qualify as a system defined by popular rule.

Largely forgotten today, Albion W. Tourgée’s legislation could have prevented Moore v. Harper.

After 110 years, a look at the benefits — and drawbacks — to expanding the chamber.