Harry S. Truman

In 1956, Ed Sullivan showed America what nuclear war looks like. We were never the same again.

The passage of Medicare and Medicaid, nearly fifty years ago, was no less contentious than recent debates about Obamacare.

Conservatives dream of returning to a world where private charity fulfilled all public needs. But that world never existed, and we're better for it.

Why was a second bomb used against Japan, so soon after Hiroshima? A review of several theories.

Robert Engler's award-winning 1955 investigation into the oil industry.

Legendary filmmaker Oliver Stone says we’re closer than ever to finally piecing together the mystery of November 22, 1963.

A Soviet blockade around Berlin cut the city off from the West. But in 1948 U.S. and British pilots began to fly food, fuel and medicine to the Allied sectors.

The long tradition of the US government using border policy as a tool for political control, stretching back to Red Scare efforts to suppress left-wing dissent.

In the ’50s, America declared science an ‘endless frontier.’ We may be reaching the end of it.

Dinner parties in the capital have long been a path to power, but Perle Mesta had her eye on a different prize.

Former President Jimmy Carter, who died Sunday at age 100, gave visibility to devastating health problems that are often invisible.

The 1946 elections were a disaster for Democrats—and the reason I was born.

This remarkably prescient document holds several lessons about how to run foreign policy.

A new book celebrates an American political dynasty dedicated to public service. Why have they been forgotten?

In 1952, news stations combined two new technologies—the TV and the computer—to forever transform how voters experience election night.

History can make the U.S. better prepared for the specter of protracted large-scale ground combat, which has grown more real in the wake of the ongoing war in Ukraine.

A military consumed by identity politics threatens the integrity of the republic.

Kamala Harris called Iran a “destabilizing, dangerous force.” The appropriate context for this is the US’s own decades-long history of destabilizing Iran.

In 1956, The New York Times, dismayed by wayward polls in the prior presidential race, sent teams of reporters across the nation to better gauge public opinion.

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