Identity

The path to the World Cup is accessible to only a narrow slice of American soccer players.

Can our unruly national story be squeezed into two vessels?

A critique of a new history of American sexuality, arguing that queer and trans histories should challenge, not simply expand, traditional narratives.

H.W. Brands on the early career of our first president.

While working on the Smithsonian's Till exhibit, I learned how ideas about masculinity factored into the boy's murder.

The organization best known for its dance numbers and trick plays is now reviving one of the most entertaining—and controversial—franchises in baseball history.

A new PBS documentary reveals the Thoreau often softened in high school textbooks.

The reporting subject I knew best.

Centuries before the American Revolution, Spanish-speaking women crossed oceans and deserts to build communities whose legacies still shape the United States.

In the wake of the Cold War, some Soviet bloc spies decided their fake American lives weren’t so bad.

How have the survivors reckoned with what happened to them, and what made us forget about this act of violence?

The patriotism embraced by American laborers united immigrant workers across backgrounds, but can that solidarity be reclaimed today?

As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of American independence, our founding charter remains central to our national life.

The abolitionist was a techno-optimist.

How a New Deal Brooklyn boyhood, and a certain Manhattan storefront, sent Senator Sanders to the Green Mountains that formed him.

One of the most brilliant minds of the Harvard class of ’35, Reed Peggram met his soulmate on the eve of World War II and risked everything to stay by his side.

The rise of a violent authoritarian state under Trump unveils a deep uncertainty over what America is.

Before her murder made her a true-crime obsession, Elizabeth Short was a real person. A new book tries to separate truth from myth in the infamous case.

Mark Twain wasn’t a nihilist but held a complex, evolving spiritual outlook shaped by liberal religion.

How generations in America have made Jewish identity more complicated.

The very American story of Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance.

Chronicling the experience of a teenage soldier during the Revolutionary War.

A new biography of the journalist Walter Lippmann bashes conservatives but adds value.

The “Jewish Question” is a scapegoating conspiracy. This essay traces its appeal, partial truths, and why it falsely absolves America of blame.

The "The Camp of the Saints" and its American readers.

A writer looks back at the book that shaped her understanding of girlhood, body, and shame.

Long before the Trail of Tears, English colonists drove Maryland’s Indigenous tribes from their land. Piscataway descendants want people to know their history.

Plath felt that marriage and children were the necessary but insufficient condition of her continued creativity.

A new biopic starring Sydney Sweeney as the legendary athlete chronicles Martin’s fights in and outside of the ring.

Are we really living through a uniquely lonely moment? When it comes to friendship, this isn’t the first time that authorities have cried wolf.