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A photograph of George Washington Cable with Mark Twain.

The Dying Pelican

Romanticism, local color, and nostalgic New Orleans.
by Eleanor Stern via 64 Parishes on February 29, 2024
A Buddhist monk stands next to a banner with a picture of monk Thich Quang Duc who set fire to himself to protest the Vietnam War.

Why Would Anyone Kill Themselves to Stop A War?

In the past 3 months, two people in the US have taken or risked taking their own lives in an attempt to change US policies on Palestine and call for a cease-fire.
by Ann Wright via Common Dreams on February 26, 2024
The Fulton Fish Market.

When Your Childhood Belongs to Everyone: Growing Up in a Manhattan That Changed Forever on 9/11

Loft life above the Fulton Fish Market and the day that everything changed.
by Emma Dries via Literary Hub on February 22, 2024
Gloved hand holding COVID-19-shaped dandelion

Did the Year 2020 Change Us Forever?

The COVID-19 pandemic affected us in millions of ways. But it evades the meanings we want it to bear.
by Adam Gopnik via The New Yorker on February 19, 2024
A crowd at an American Nazi Party rally raising their hands for the Nazi salute.

What Is the History of Fascism in the United States?

Bruce Kuklick traces the meaning of the term “fascist” from its origins to the present day and how it has, over the years, gradually lost its coherence.
by Richard J. Evans via The Nation on January 17, 2024
Book cover of "Living the Dream" by Daniel T. Fleming.

Fighting to Desegregate the American Calendar

As a versatile but complex hero, King led a life open to interpretation by politicians and activists of all types who fiercely debated his legacy.
by Daniel T. Fleming, Brock Schnoke via UNC Press Blog on January 15, 2024
A statue of Martin Luther King Jr. stands larger than life in the center of the frame; two small figures view it in the foreground

The Struggle for Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Memory

How political misappropriations of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s legacy fuel right-wing movements.
by Hajar Yazdiha via Contexts Magazine on January 15, 2024
A nearly gutted department store escalator in Owings Mills Mall in Owings Mills, Maryland.

The Life and Death of the American Mall

The indoor suburban shopping center is a special kind of abandoned place.
by Matthew Christopher via Atlas Obscura on January 10, 2024
Mirror images of General James Longstreet.

How a Die-Hard Confederate General Became a Civil Rights–Supporting Republican

James Longstreet became an apostate for supporting black civil rights during Reconstruction.
by Matthew E. Stanley via Jacobin on January 5, 2024
Two American soldiers in UCP uniforms with an Iraqi man in the background.

Universal Failure

Universal Camouflage Pattern became a symbol of an unpopular war. Today, it’s being reappraised by those too young to remember the invasion of Iraq.
by Charles McFarlane via The Baffler on January 4, 2024
partner

The Boston Tea Party, Top to Bottom

A historian attends the 250th anniversary of the Tea Party, and reflects on the ways Americans remember one of the Revolution's main set pieces.
by Benjamin L. Carp via HNN on December 27, 2023
Kris Kringle with children from the film 'Santa Claus is Comin' to Town.'
partner

A Classic Christmas Movie Offers a Lesson About Antisemitism

Nazis play a key role as villain in American collective consciousness—but without broad understanding of antisemitism.
by Rebecca Brenner Graham via Made By History on December 21, 2023
original

Beyond Dispossession

For generations, depictions of Native Americans have reduced them to either aggressors or victims. But at many public history sites, that is starting to change.
by Ed Ayers on December 6, 2023
A photograph of the back of a woman's head, superimposed over a photograph of a body of water as if looking out over it.

What if Nostalgia Isn’t What It Used to Be?

As our faith in the future plummets and the present blends with the past, we feel certain that we’ve reached the point where history has fallen apart.
by Thomas Mallon via The New Yorker on November 20, 2023
A man wearing a cowboy outfit shoots at a series of targets in a sand pit

Home on the (Firing) Range: Gunfight Reenactments, “Old West” Competitive Shooting, and the Myth of Authenticity

Reenactments of the frontier west, complete with cowboy shootouts on main streets, reproduce a narrative of history that is widely accepted by millions.
by Jennifer Tucker via The Panorama on November 15, 2023
Article about the KKK from an old copy of the Atlantic

What The Atlantic Got Wrong About Reconstruction

In 1901, a series of articles took a dim view of the era, and of the idea that all Americans ought to participate in the democratic process.
by Yoni Appelbaum via The Atlantic on November 13, 2023
Collage of Louis Armstrong playing the trumpet, waving, and smoking, and a picture of his home in Queens.

Louis Armstrong Gets the Last Word on Louis Armstrong

For decades, Americans have argued over the icon’s legacy. But his archives show that he had his own plans.
by Ethan Iverson via The Nation on October 30, 2023
Lou Reed with sunglasses on. A glare reflects off of the sunglasses.

The Least-Known Rock God

A new biography of the Velvet Underground founder, Lou Reed, considers the stark duality of the man and his music.
by Will Hermes via The Atlantic on October 8, 2023

Memorializing Racial Terror

An interactive map of lynching markers in the United States.
by Gianluca de Fazio via James Madison University on October 5, 2023
Destroyed buildings and streets in the aftermath of the Chicago fire.

What Really Started the Great Chicago Fire?

The famous disaster razed a metropolis and spread a pack of colorful lies. To sift through the ashes today is to encounter some uncomfortable truths.
by Margaret Talbot via The New Yorker on October 2, 2023
The Devil Presenting St. Augustine with The Book of Vices by Michael Pacher, 1471-1475

St. Augustine's 9/11 Anniversary

Lord, implored President Biden, let us "turn the page" on the War on Terror. Just not yet.
by Spencer Ackerman via Forever Wars on September 11, 2023
Smoke pours from La Moneda, the Chilean presidential palace, during the military coup.

50 Years After “the Other 9/11”: Remembering the Chilean Coup

Some personal reflections on history, memory, and the survival of democracies.
by Ariel Dorfman via The Nation on September 11, 2023
Salvador Allende campaigning before Chile’s parliamentary elections, Santiago, February 1973.

Defending Allende

On September 4, 1973, an enormous multitude of Chileans poured into the streets of Santiago to back the besieged government of Salvador Allende.
by Ariel Dorfman via New York Review of Books on August 24, 2023
Hip hop nightclub.

Golden-Era Rap Music and the Black Intellectual Tradition

In Hip hop’s “golden era,” the period from 1987 to 1994, rappers used their platforms to bring attention to issues plaguing poor and working-class Black communities.
by Antoine S. Johnson via Black Perspectives on August 15, 2023
Winding section of Highway 42 in Wisconsin.

Wisconsin's Long and Winding Road Has a Secret Past

For decades, locals believed landscape architect Jens Jensen designed this twisty stretch of Highway 42—the real history is even more serpentine.
by Tea Krulos via Atlas Obscura on August 15, 2023
Men hearing testimony at the courts marshal of 64 African American soldiers in Houston in 1917.

How Fake History Gets Made

A minor incident gets distorted in order to provide a desired racial story.
by Helen Andrews via The American Conservative on June 27, 2023
Empty, dimly lit interior of shopping mall.

Nostalgia's Empire

We should interrogate nostalgia’s primacy without advocating for its eradication.
by Grafton Tanner, Johny Pitts via Public Books on June 8, 2023
Collage of Juneteenth-related images.

The Story We’ve Been Told About Juneteenth Is Wrong

The real history of Juneteenth is much messier—and more inspiring.
by Peniel E. Joseph via Texas Monthly on May 18, 2023
Chainlink fence in a desert with a danger sign warning of arsenic poison

The Toxic Legacy of the Gold Rush

Almost 175 years after the Gold Rush began, Californians are left holding the bag for thousands of abandoned mines.
by Leah Campbell via Gizmodo on May 15, 2023
A portrait of Jackie Robinson in his Brooklyn Dodgers uniform, circa 1945.

Jackie Robinson Was More Than a Baseball Player

Jackie Robinson is popularly portrayed as the man who broke baseball’s color line by quietly enduring racist abuse. But that narrative is much too narrow.
by Michael Arria, David Naze via Jacobin on May 12, 2023
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