Henry David Thoreau

Historical narratives of the United States have never not been shaped by an anxiety about the end of it all. Are we a new Rome or a new Zion?

Lincoln protected thousands of acres of California forest and wanted to restore the nation’s battle-ravaged countryside before he was assassinated.

William James, Charles Peirce, and the questions that roiled them.

The righteous rage of John Brown.

In Jill Lepore's "These Truths," ideas produce other ideas. But new ideas arise from thinking humans, not from other ideas.

Du Bois's ideas about the environment — and how Jim Crow shaped them — have gone relatively unnoticed by environmental historians.

Susan Fenimore Cooper is now being recognized as one of the nation's first environmentalists.

Hannah Duston was used as a national symbol of innocence, valor, and patriotism to justify westward expansion.

Why do people hike?

Robert Frost’s correspondence on teaching, writing and having fun.

More than 150 years ago, Frederick Law Olmsted changed how Americans think of public space.

Reflections on the ahistorical, aristocratic, and romanticist approach to "nature" elevated by John Muir, and by his admirer, Ken Burns.

A look back at the historian's work suggests that contemporary radicals may be all too invested in the myth of American consensus.