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Still from "The Apprentice."

The Power Broker: Roy Cohn on Screen

The closeted right-wing operative has become a tragic character in the American repertory.

by Mark Asch via Mubi on December 5, 2024

Reagan and supporters at a campaign rally in 1984.

Reagan Resurgent?

Commentary on America’s 40th president often misses how the Gipper blended principles and pragmatism for a truly conservative statesmanship.

by Anthony Eames via Law & Liberty on December 4, 2024

Still from the documentary "Obsessed with Light", depicting Loie Fuller on stage in a gown.

A Dazzling Light in Dance History

When dancer Loïe Fuller’s spinning garment reflected the stage lights, it took on a life of its own, beguiling those in New York, Berlin, and Paris.

by Eileen G’Sell via Hyperallergic on December 3, 2024

Photo contact sheet from Ronald Reagan speech on Nicaragua in 1986.

Letting the World Scream

The U.S., Nicaragua, and the International Court of Justice in the 1980s.

by Sean T. Byrnes via HNN on November 26, 2024

Margaret Sanger and Mary Ware Dennet

The Frenemies Who Fought to Bring Birth Control to the U.S.

Though Margaret Sanger and Mary Ware Dennett shared a mission, they took very different approaches. Their rivalry was political, sometimes even personal.

by Margaret Talbot via The New Yorker on November 18, 2024

Drawing of George Washington watching over a group of enslaved people working in a field at Mount Vernon.

Even George Washington Was a Tyrant

We don't need to find heroes in our past presidents. We need to try to understand that tyranny has always been part of American freedom.

by Karin Wulf via Made By History on November 18, 2024

The Case Against New York Times v. Sullivan

The malice test is the result of judicial activism and should be rejected by a Court that understands its task as the discovery, not the invention of law.

by Carson Holloway via Law & Liberty on November 1, 2024

Taylor Swift's Instagram post endorsing Kamala Harris. Swift is holding a cat and facing the camera, dressed in black.

Taylor Swift and the History of the Celebrity Endorsement

Do pop culture interventions in presidential elections make a difference?

by Addie Mahmassani via New Lines Magazine on October 23, 2024

Medicine chest.

The Trial That Sparked Maine's 1840 Abortion Statute

Maine passed its first abortion statute in 1840, not long after the pardon of Dr. Call. Could there be a connection?

by Patricia Cline Cohen via Commonplace on October 22, 2024

George Floyd protest

Reflections of the 60th Anniversary of Urban Uprisings in America

The media narrative used to discredit urban rebellions as violent betrayals of the civil rights movement has been attached to protests ever since.

by Heather Ann Thompson via Black Perspectives on October 17, 2024

A drawing of 10 identical women in historical cooking, but nine of them are colored green and one of them is red.

Anthony Bourdain on the Life and Legacy of a Truly Infamous Cook: Typhoid Mary

“Mary Mallon was a cook. And her story, first and foremost, is the story of a cook.”

by Anthony Bourdain via Literary Hub on October 15, 2024

Illustration of Willie Mayes holding a baseball bat, while men watch from the city.

A Giant of a Man

The legacy of Willie Mays and the Birmingham ballpark where he first made his mark.

by Eric Wills via The American Scholar on October 10, 2024

George Washington

The Moment of Truth

The reelection of Donald Trump would mark the end of George Washington’s vision for the presidency—and the United States.

by Tom Nichols via The Atlantic on October 9, 2024

How John Lewis Put a Legacy of Heroism to Use

As the civil-rights era receded, his personal heroism loomed larger. But movement politics didn’t easily translate into party politics.

by Kelefa Sanneh via The New Yorker on October 7, 2024

Cartoon of a person squished upside-down in a city high-rise.

The Death and Life of Progressive Urbanism

Blue America lacks a Gov. Ron DeSantis: someone remaking a state or major city in the image of a well-articulated ideology.

by Ross Barkan via Compact on October 2, 2024

Ulysses S. Grant finishing his memoir shortly before he died.

Grant vs. the Klan

New books reconsider how Ulysses S. Grant became a forceful defender of the rights of African Americans after the Civil War.

by David S. Reynolds via New York Review of Books on September 26, 2024

George Gallup reenacting his polling methods on a talk show.

The Problems with Polls

Political polling’s greatest achievement is its complete co-opting of our understanding of public opinion, which we can no longer imagine without it.

by Samuel Earle via New York Review of Books on September 26, 2024

A handwritten envelope for court documents in "The United States v. Thomas Chittenden."

Guilty as Charged

Convicting Vermont’s first governor.

by Gary Shattuck via Journal of the American Revolution on September 26, 2024

Kamala Harris on stage at a campaign rally

The Polling Imperilment

Presidential polls are no more reliable than they were a century ago. So why do they consume our political lives?

by Rick Perlstein via The American Prospect on September 25, 2024

“In the White Interest”

Many founders expressed their hope that slavery would be abolished, while simultaneously exerting themselves to defend it.

by Timothy Messer-Kruse via HNN on September 18, 2024

Eleanor Roosevelt speaking at a podium.

The Women She Left Behind

Eleanor Roosevelt’s tacit support for a program that jailed sex workers suggests the limits of the elite-led reform efforts she championed.

by Scott Wasserman Stern via New York Review of Books on September 18, 2024

Gustav Mahler; Charles Ives.

Anchoring Shards of Memory

We don’t often associate Charles Ives and Gustav Mahler, but both composers mined the past to root themselves in an unstable present.

by Joseph Horowitz via The American Scholar on September 9, 2024

Congressman Phil Burton and State Assemblymen Leo T. McCarthy, Willie L. Brown and Art Agnos.

How San Francisco’s Democratic Political Machine Led to Kamala Harris’ Presidential Campaign

Kamala Harris is the heir to a political lineage that dates back to a chain-smoking, hard-drinking mastermind elected to Congress from San Francisco in 1964.

by Lincoln A. Mitchell via The Conversation on August 9, 2024

Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson.

Hate Burst Out: Chicago, 1968

It is hard not to figure the 1968 election as inaugurating the cultural and political polarisation of the American electorate so evident today.

by Kim Phillips-Fein via London Review of Books on August 7, 2024

James Baldwin

The Brilliance in James Baldwin’s Letters

The famous author, who would have been 100 years old today, was best known for his novels and essays. But correspondence was where his light shone brightest.

by Vann R. Newkirk II via The Atlantic on August 2, 2024

Herman Melville; illustration by Maya Chessman.

Siding with Ahab

Can we appreciate Herman Melville’s work without attributing to it schemes for the uplift of modern man?

by Christopher Benfey via New York Review of Books on July 25, 2024

Joe Biden sitting in the Oval Office.

There Has Been Nothing Like This in American History

Joe Biden is hardly the first president who has decided not to seek a second term—but the circumstances this time are unique.

by Fred Kaplan via Slate on July 21, 2024

Barack Obama speaking in front of a museum exhibit titled "Writing the Constitution."

The Constitution and the American Left

A culture of reverence for the U.S. Constitution shields the founding document from criticism, despite its many shortcomings.

by Aziz Rana via Dissent on July 19, 2024

Drawing of a classic pirate figure, wtih an earring, a tricorn hat, and a satchel, yelling orders at a crew while a ship burns in the background

Were Pirates Foes of the Modern Order—or Its Secret Sharers?

We’ve long viewed them as liberty-loving rebels. But it’s time to take off the eye patch.

by Daniel Immerwahr via The New Yorker on July 15, 2024

Chief Justice John Roberts attending the State of the Union.

J. Roberts et al. v. A. Lincoln

As the Supreme Court invents a law to negate all others, Chief Justice John Roberts now ranks just below Roger Taney.

by Harold Meyerson via The American Prospect on July 8, 2024

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