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James M. Hinds portraits shown blurry as if ink colors were misaligned during printing.

The Eloquent Vindicator in the Electric Room

No one remembers the assassination of Congressman James M. Hinds. What do we risk by making it just another part of American history?
by Drew Johnson via Longreads on September 9, 2025
Frank Meyer testifying before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1959.

Frank Meyer’s Path from Devoted Communist to Promoter of Conservative ‘Fusionism’

A detailed, exhausting, and ultimately too-gentle treatment of the midcentury writer and editor, Frank Meyer.
by Joshua Tait via The Bulwark on August 26, 2025
Billy Wilder walking down a street, holding a cigarette.

Billy Wilder’s Battle With the Past

How the fabled Hollywood director confronted survivor’s guilt, the legacies of the Holocaust, and the paradoxes of Zionism.
by Ben Schwartz via The Nation on August 18, 2025
Silhouettes of a family, three wearing shirts showing matching DNA shirts, and one with different DNA.

The Family Fallout of DNA Surprises

Through genetic testing, millions of Americans have discovered family secrets. The news has upended relationships and created a community looking for answers.
by Jennifer Wilson via The New Yorker on August 18, 2025
Demonstrators march, carrying signs against firing City College faculty.

Eric Foner’s Personal History

Reflecting on his decades-long career, the historian considers what his field of study owes to the public.
by Eric Foner via The Nation on August 14, 2025
Joseph Pilates and Romana Kryzanowska illustration of them doing pilates.

Bodies by Joe

With his strange machines and an uncanny, intuitive understanding of muscles, Joseph Pilates created a new technique for improving strength and movement.
by Alma Guillermoprieto via New York Review of Books on July 31, 2025
A Farm Security Administration representative visits Seabrook Farms in New Jersey in May 1938.

Destiny of the Dispossessed Spinach Prince

John Seabrook’s history of Seabrook Farms, where many incarcerated Japanese Americans worked during WWII, is ultimately about fathers and sons.
by Nick Ripatrazone via The Bulwark on July 25, 2025
A drawing of a microscopic slide of Bacterium lactis.

Dying Before Germ Theory

The harrowing experience of being powerless against illness and death.
by Melanie A. Kiechle via Nursing Clio on July 21, 2025
Mugshot of a man staring blandly into the camera.

What I Inherited from My Criminal Great-Grandparents

In working through the Winter case files, I often felt pinpricks of déjà vu: an exact turn of phrase, an absurdly specific expenditure.
by Jessica Winter via The New Yorker on July 14, 2025
Japanese-American man in a military uniform.

He Spent His Life Trying to Prove That He Was a Loyal U.S. Citizen. It Wasn’t Enough.

How Joseph Kurihara lost his faith in America.
by Andrew Aoyama via The Atlantic on July 9, 2025
Leonard Peltier adjusts the black bandana around his head.

Leonard Peltier’s Story Isn’t Over Yet

The Native activist spent nearly fifty years in prison for the killing of two F.B.I. agents. In January, Joe Biden commuted his sentence, and he went home.
by Nick Estes, Leonard Peltier via The New Yorker on June 26, 2025
Lee Pattie Registrar's Report

Trouble with the Brothers: Booze, Divorce, and Madness in the American West

The past really is a foreign country, as historian Jonathan Ablard finds when piecing together the turbulent history of his ancestors in the West and Midwest.
by Jonathan Ablard via Tropics of Meta on June 23, 2025

Remembering One of America’s First Modern School Shootings, 50 Years Later

A teacher tells the story of 1974’s Olean, New York High School murders.
by Sally Ventura via Literary Hub on June 23, 2025

The Heritage of Dylann Roof

Ten years after the Charleston massacre, reverence for the Confederacy that Roof idolized is going strong.
by Elizabeth Robeson via The Nation on June 17, 2025
Advertisement highlighting recipes to make with Seabrook frozen vegetables.

Decline and Fall of the Spinach Kings: On the Wilting of a Family Dynasty

A history of wealth, enterprise, and family dysfunction.
by John Seabrook via Literary Hub on June 11, 2025
Digital rendering of a woman looking out over rows of blue digital file folders.

Archivists Aren’t Ready for the ‘Very Online’ Era

The challenge: how to catalog and derive meaning from so much digital clutter.
by Michael Waters via The Atlantic on June 4, 2025
Mother's hand holding baby's hand on the cover of "Blue: A History of Postpartum Depression in America".

On Rachel Louise Moran’s "Blue: A History of Postpartum Depression in America"

A new book challenges the discursive ignorance about the condition.
by Audrey Wu Clark via Society for U.S. Intellectual History on May 25, 2025
Cartoon drawing with Red Scare history written on New York City buildings.

When the Red Scare Came for Jessica Mitford

A graphic episode from "Do Admit: The Mitford Sisters and Me."
by Mimi Pond via The Nation on May 13, 2025
V. Ramirez's Army Corps badge.

How Real ID Excludes Real Americans

My dad’s birth certificate said Vicente. His passport said Vince. New legislation would have disenfranchised him.
by Catherine S. Ramírez via Zócalo Public Square on May 12, 2025
Mexican men in line for work in the Bracero program.
partner

What the World War II-Era Bracero Program Reveals About U.S. Immigration Debates

Efforts to restrict immigration have long coexisted with — and even reinforced — the nation's economic reliance on Mexican laborers.
via Retro Report on May 9, 2025
Brown University women's glee club, including Clara Gomberg, the first Jewish woman to graduate Brown.

“A Jewess Would Not Be Acceptable”

When it came to antisemitism, women’s colleges were no better than the Ivy League.
by Amy Sohn via Arc: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera on May 8, 2025
Indigenous girl among a line of U.S. peace commissioners.

American History Needs More Names

Identifying Sophie Mousseau from a Civil War-Era photo helps us understand our complex past.
by Martha A. Sandweiss via Zócalo Public Square on April 21, 2025
Painting by Hiroki Kawanabe titled Wide Street.

Legacies of Japanese American Incarceration

Brandon Shimoda’s book about the memorialization of Japanese internment camps also speaks to the brutal system of migrant detention that continues to this day.
by Francisco Cantú via New York Review of Books on April 3, 2025
Children at the Oakland Community School, 1973.

What Happens When the U.S. Declares War on Your Parents?

The Black Panthers shook America before the party was gutted by the government. Their children paid a steep price, but also emerged with unassailable pride.
by Ed Pilkington via The Guardian on March 25, 2025
Graydon Carter sitting next to stacks of ornate, empty chairs.

Vanity Fair’s Heyday

I was once paid six figures to write an article—now what?
by Bryan Burrough via The Yale Review on March 14, 2025
David Levering Lewis and his book overlaid on a stained glass window.

No Nation Under Their Feet

A historian explores his own family's history to understand the African-American community’s internal pigmentocracy and the absurdity of racial binaries.
by David Levering Lewis, Steve Nathans-Kelly via Chicago Review of Books on February 14, 2025
Chinese workers standing in the streets.

The Long Shadow of the Chinese Exclusion Act

The true cost of the immigration policy can be measured in the generations of Chinese Americans who were never born.
by Jane C. Hu via The New Yorker on January 23, 2025
Home owners Loan Corporation map of Detroit.

Beyond Brown: The Failure of Desegregation in the North and America’s Lingering Racial Fault Lines

On the ongoing legal struggle for educational and racial equality across the United States.
by Michelle Adams via Literary Hub on January 15, 2025
Sound waves.

Listening Devices

The veterans of Kagnew Station saw the early growth of the surveillance state. Has the passage of time given them a new understanding of their work?
by Ann Neumann via The Baffler on January 6, 2025
Harry Truman holding a register to vote sign with three other men.

Politics Is Personal

The 1946 elections were a disaster for Democrats—and the reason I was born.
by Peter Quinn via Commonweal on December 24, 2024
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