Excerpts

John Jacob Astor’s "A Journey in Other Worlds" is a high-voltage scientific romance in which visions of imperialism haunt a supposedly “perfect” future.

A very old concept remains a key part of navigating the United States' broken immigration system.

America’s gerontocracy is disconnecting Congress from the rest of the country.

Murdered during the 1929 Loray Mill strike, Ella May Wiggins became a working-class martyr—and a symbol of labor’s fight to democratize the anti-union South.

Alone in his stand, Weldon Heyburn despised that Robert E. Lee would be memorialized with a statue in the U.S. Capitol.

Kristine K. Ronan describes her discovery of two Native American statues at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello.

How a best-selling series gave young readers a new sense of agency.

The practice of seeing Florida’s people, culture and history in caricature form is deeply rooted in the state’s colonial past.

Institutions meant to secure peace, from NATO to the U.N., date back to Truman’s Presidency. So do the conflicts threatening that peace.

How the story itself came out.

Against the backdrop of another conflict over slavery in 1861, Thomas Wentworth Higginson wrote an in-depth narrative of Denmark Vesey's planned slave revolt in Charleston, SC.

The practice of “redlining” kept people of color from home loans for decades.

We must dive deeper into the intellectual artifacts of black women thinkers to support the evolution of black feminist discourse and political action.

The interconnected circles of writers, painters, muses, and more.

How U.S. agricultural policy has evolved over time.

How the Eighteenth Amendment fueled America’s taste for ice cream.

How the push for statehood led a beacon of racial progress to oppression and violence.

Mississippi's Black residents have long fought for access to clean water.

Fifty years ago, zealots preaching misogyny and homophobia—led by an accused sexual predator—took over America’s largest Protestant denomination.

How new student loan programs turned students into consumers — and ignited a competition among universities that left them drowning in debt.

Guthrie challenged the commercial aesthetic of the pre-rock era through a performance style that was almost combatively anti-musical.

What America’s last major party crack-up in the 1850s tells us about the 2010s.

An excerpt from "The Hidden History of Neoliberalism."

Edward Bernays and the colonial adventures of the United Fruit Company.

Brad Ricca dives into the history of the Cleveland Indians' name and the creation of "Chief Wahoo."

Uvalde's current protests against gun control mirror those of student protests in the early 1970s.

Getting the history of “busing” right enables us to see more clearly how school segregation and educational inequality continued in the decades after Brown.

Urban density was once seen as a sign of unhealthiness and poverty, but today it is necessary to make cities sustainable.

Ken Burns’ account of prohibition tells a popular story of booze in America. The historical record is far more sobering.

My Chinese-immigrant parents dreamed big for me, their American-born daughter whom they raised in the suburbs east of San Francisco.

The huge, declassified document includes death threats, red scare performances, and extensive investigation into her Yahoo! Groups fan site.

Theodore Roosevelt said his made him look like “a mewing cat.” Lyndon Johnson called his “the ugliest thing I ever saw.” Ronald Reagan ordered a do-over.

In the 17th century, Dutch proselytisers set out for Asia, Africa and the Americas. The legacy of their travels endures.

The aviation pioneer was many things before—and after—her career as a pilot was cut short.

The history of patrols, body cams, and more.

The electricity industry knew about the dangers of climate change 40 years ago. It denied them anyway.

We will never truly achieve racial justice until we, collectively, learn how to treat and heal the wound of white supremacy.

The story of John Quincy Adams’ forgotten epic poem—and its most critical reader.

Bill Clinton gutted welfare and criminalized the poor, all while funneling more money into the carceral state.

An alternative tradition in our politics has long helped convince Americans that tax enforcement is good.

How a folk hero inspired one of the most covered songs in American history.

A new book on Claude McKay is part of an effort to place the poetry of the Harlem Renaissance within the Black radical tradition.

The 2015 Paris Agreement represented a shift in the climate regime towards "new governance," expanding the roles of nation-states and non-state actors alike.

Why are so many songs of the Confederacy indelibly inscribed in my Yankee memory?

Responding to a controversial recent critique of "presentism," two historians make the case that history and politics have always been deeply interwoven.

In midcentury America, the machine itself became a character.

How British protestantism connected colonies and empire until the rupture of the American Revolution.

One of the country’s oldest fire lookouts was destroyed last year in the largest wildfire in California’s history. What else is being lost?

Three books explore a history of fractious extremism that predates Donald Trump.

How to understand Adam Smith’s politics.