Peter S. Onuf

American Indians and the tumult in their cultures precipitated by the arrival of alcohol.

What does it mean to be Muslim in America? And how has the practice of Islam in the U.S. changed over time?

On the occasion of Halloween, an exploration of previous generations' fascination with ghosts, spirits, and witches.

The legacy of Operation Pedro Pan, a plan to save Cuban children from communist indoctrination by leaving their families and resettling in the United States.

A brief discussion of the fierce 19th century debates over beards, and how booming American cities created the perfect climate for all that facial hair to grow.

A discussion of the patriotic attempt to spurn European fashion and spin cloth at home in the time leading up to the Revolutionary War.

When the federal government began to claim a stake in the public’s physical fitness, and the origins of the Presidential Physical Fitness Test.

Nasology was a 19th century pseudoscience which claimed to explain personality traits based on the shape of a person’s nose.

On the 1870s skirmish between John D. Rockefeller and the upstart competitors who built the country’s first long-distance oil pipeline.

How the mythologizing of the Union Army’s Irish Brigade helped dispel anti-Irish sentiment.

Women in the workplace, from 19th century domestic workers to the Rosies of World War II to the labs of Silicon Valley.

Using oral histories of early East Texas oil workers, recorded in the 1950s, we hear about the chaos and excess that accompanied the discovery of oil.

Syracuse University Geography professor Matt Huber discusses the 1930s oil boom in the American southwest, and the military might brought in to control it.

Tracing the evolution of Christmas from a drunken carnival to the peaceful, family-oriented, consumeristic ritual we celebrate today.

A time before “everyone” knew the story of Christopher Columbus, and the role of Washington Irving’s massive biography in creating the heroic Columbus myth.

Columbus Day is here again -- along with the controversy over its namesake. How have earlier generations understood him?

An author's search for the "real" Christopher Columbus.

Frederick Douglass’ 1852 speech is widely known as one of the greatest abolitionist speeches ever.

An explanation of the Manhattan Company, a bank disguised as a municipal water corporation that helped to transform Early Republican politics.

On factional strife in the Early Republic, and why parties themselves were universally despised.