John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Whatever the “City on a Hill” is, the phrase was not discovered by Kennedy or Reagan.

Joe Biden has met with scholars to discuss his presidency and likely legacy—but what are we to make of his special relationship with historian Jon Meacham?

Conservatives have weaponized Americans’ desire to help to attack the social safety net.

Roger Mudd proved in 1964 that media attention can help overcome Senate obstruction.

Today’s progressives are children of the old Republican Party, not the New Deal Democrats. Roosevelt and his followers stood for nearly everything they oppose.

Joe Biden is just the latest in a long line of US presidents to trace their ancestry back to the Emerald Isle.

Thaddeus Stevens understood far better than most that fully uprooting slavery meant overthrowing the South’s economic system and challenging property rights.

America’s bold response to the Soviet Union depended on an unknown spy agency operative whose story can at last be told.

A cat named Miss Pussy! A racist parrot! Benjamin Harrison’s possums, which he later ate!

The answer can change over time.

How not to learn about the American past.

Jonathan W. Wilson offers a constructively critical review of Wilfred McClay's American history textbook "Land of Hope."

A new history shows how the glut of US military bases abroad has led to a constant state of military conflict.

Failures inspire distrust of pollsters and calls for more shoe-leather reporting. But by the next election, we always come running back.

“Start-ups: they need philosophers, political theorists, historians, poets. Critics.”

It helped erode discrimination but also upheld racial prejudice.

The gambit was cynical and disruptive, but in the end it didn’t work.

The administration’s historically low ceiling for refugee resettlement may signal the end of an era.

There has been some famous presidential campaign moments in the past 50 years. However, not everyone knows or remembers these moments.

Not since Reconstruction has there been such an opportunity for the advancement of racial justice.