Herman Melville

Alexander Hamilton’s anonymous essay challenged the voting citizens of New York to hold fast to the truth when deciding to ratify (or not) the US Constitution.

On the TransAm Trucking case, legal reasoning, and the Fugitive Slave Act.

Stephanie Mueller´s book sheds light on the percieved death of liberalism and the fear of corporations.

The earliest-known version of the dish was a winey, briny, bready casserole.

A new book explores the final days of Ralph Waldo Emerson - traveling from Concord to California, and beyond.

When most U.S. nationals in the early republic thought of the Pacific Ocean, they conjured lands instead.

On Lewis Mumford, Herman Melville, and the gentle art of looking back in time.

In a new exhibit, Winslow Homer, once seen as the oracle of the nation’s innocence, is recast as a poet of conflict.

A history of imperial forgetting.

While he opposed slavery and southern secession early in his career, as president Andrew Johnson turned out to be an unsightly bigot.

"Virginia Arcadia: The Natural Bridge in American Art,” at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, surveys the arch as icon and propaganda.

In 1838, as the U.S. began its Exploring Expedition to the South Seas, Edgar Allan Poe published a novel that masqueraded as a travelogue.

A new biography details the cultural jumble of literature, dirty jokes, and everything in between that went into the making of the foremost self-made American.

An activist, writer, doctor and intellectual, James McCune Smith, born enslaved, directed his talents to the eradication of slavery.

The 19th-century whale hunt was a brutal business. But between the frantic calls of “there she blows!”, there was plenty of time for creation too.

Jefferson revised the Gospels to make Jesus more reasonable, and lost the power of his story.

An insightful exploration of the ways America has read ‘the Great American Novel.’

The city was once a bustling and infamous Great Lakes port. How should it be remembered?

Andrew Delbanco's new book positions the debate over fugitive slaves as a central factor in the nation's slide toward disunion.

The rise and fall of Perry Miller.