Francis Parkman

On June 15, 1846, Francis Parkman Jr., a young, Harvard-educated historian, arrived at Fort Laramie, Wyoming, to begin his journey along the Oregon Trail.

How the late 19th century’s raucous party system gave way to a sedate and exclusionary political culture that erected more and more barriers to participation.

Two centuries of New England intellectual history through the lives and ideas of people who are memorialized there.

Is there something in particular about coming from a Native background that makes a person want to write and perform comedy?

The decades after the Civil War saw mass participation and mass outrage, followed by a period of orderly reform. What can we learn from that era today?

How two competing definitions of the idea evolved over 250 years—and why they remain largely irreconcilable.