Beverly Gage

Orange County had almost no history of its own. It turned out to be the perfect place to invent America’s.

At its height, the political crackdown felt terrifying and all-encompassing. What can we learn from how the movement unfolded—and from how it came to an end?

If Trump’s pick to lead the F.B.I. gets confirmed, the Bureau could be politicized in ways that even its notorious first director would have rejected.

Why the far right embraces foreign tyrants.

As director of the FBI for decades, J. Edgar Hoover helped build a massive, professionalized national security state and hounded leftists out of public life.

The author of a new biography explains how liberals played an important role in enabling Hoover’s antidemocratic crusade.

The FBI’s successful campaign against white supremacists is also a cautionary tale.

Institutions meant to secure peace, from NATO to the U.N., date back to Truman’s Presidency. So do the conflicts threatening that peace.

Censure brought down a crusading anti-communist senator but fired up his followers.

Andrew Bacevich makes the case that America’s elites wasted the promise of the post-Cold War era.

The Nixon impeachment proceedings and their parallels with the Trump-Ukraine scandal.

Viewed purely in terms of statistics, the recycling of the Gilded Age moniker makes sense, but comparison masks what’s unique about today’s inequality crisis.