Dwight D. Eisenhower

The US today has extraordinary levels of gun ownership. But to see this as a venerable tradition is to misread history.

One of the country’s greatest rhetorical traditions still has the power to remind us of our founding principles.

George Balanchine and Martha Graham trade places.

After World War II ended, government and military leaders were ready to return women to their domestic roles. But one woman had other ideas.

The special relationship between the United States and Israel was cemented by the support offered by Lyndon B. Johnson throughout the sixties.

How to thrive in the power élite—while declaring it your enemy.

In the 1950s the construction of a dam on the Texas–Mexico border displaced communities from their land—and anticipated the wall-building underway today.

How the Southern Strategy of the late 20th century gave rise to the modern GOP.

Former Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust’s extraordinary memoir recalls painful memories for her--and me.

A new book sorts through the fate of the leader of the fight for Congolese independence.

When Congo gained independence during the Cold War, secret U.S. actions undermined its young democracy. It’s time to make up for that.

On the 78th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Japan, we should remember that deploying the bomb wasn’t necessary to win the war.

It was the first Southern school to be integrated by court order, and the town reluctantly prepared to comply. Then an acolyte of Ezra Pound’s showed up.

After revealing the government’s lies about Vietnam, Ellsberg spent six decades as an anti-nuclear activist, getting arrested in civil-disobedience protests.

The American right doesn’t need the John Birch Society these days, but that is because it’s adopted the Birchers’ extremism wholesale.

Seventy years after a disgraceful episode of anti-LGTBQ history, we are facing a new wave of McCarthyist fearmongering.

The John Birch Society pushed a darker, more conspiratorial politics in the ’50s and ’60s — and looms large over today’s GOP.

The philosophy that drives the GOP's attacks on government and how it has fueled some of our biggest problems.

Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy publicly apologized after restaurants refused to serve Black representatives of newly independent nations.

Recent years have witnessed a record number of challenges against books, especially in school libraries. But attempts to ban certain books isn't new in the U.S.