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Woods along the path of the British retreat from Concord to Boston.

Why Concord?

The geological origins of the American Revolution.
by Robert A. Gross, Robert Thorson via The Atlantic
This publication restricts nonsubscriber access to some or all of its articles.
on October 8, 2025
Children standing in front of a house and pollution/smoke in background.

American Berserk

A new book links the Pacific Northwest’s infamous serial killers to decades of toxic lead pollution, arguing that poison bred violence.
by James Lasdun via London Review of Books
This publication restricts nonsubscriber access to some or all of its articles.
on October 29, 2025
View looking up at office buildings skyscrapers in Manhattan.

The Eternal Reinvention of the American Downtown

The rise of remote work is only the latest in a long line of challenges that US business districts have faced. This time, cities have a chance to do it right.
by Benjamin Schneider via CityLab
This publication restricts nonsubscriber access to some or all of its articles.
on October 23, 2025
Author Julian Aguon as a child with his family.

Blessed Is the Spot

In a militarized territory like Guam, everything is political, even cancer.
by Julian Aguon via Places Journal on October 15, 2025

Exhibits

Exhibit

NOLA Pasts

Legacies of geography, colonization, and slavery in the Crescent City.

Roosevelt and Muir on horseback at Yosemite National Park.
Exhibit

National Parks

This exhibit examines the roles national parks have played in environmental conservation, tourism and recreation, and public history interpretation.

Exhibit

Heart Lands

The American Midwest in history and memory.

San Francisco parade poster.
Exhibit

Frisco Bound

Explore the city's history of cultural innovation and its fights for social and economic justice.

Exhibit

Boston Commons

The innovations, and the prejudices, that have shaped the landscape and the community of the "hub of the universe."

Independence Hall.
Exhibit

Philadelphia Story

The revolutionary debates in the nation's first capital were only the beginning of Philadelphia as a site of contested legal, political, and medical innovation.

One person passes a notebook to another, while armed men watch a building burn.

The Intimate Legacies of a White-Supremacist Coup

A racist takeover in Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1898, has reverberated across generations as a reminder of American democracy’s terrifying vulnerability.
by Lauren Collins via The New Yorker
This publication restricts nonsubscriber access to some or all of its articles.
on July 3, 2026
The Atlas Obscura Podcast
Podcast
The Atlas Obscura Podcast

The Complicated History of Natchez, Mississippi

Natchez, Mississippi is home to one of the largest concentrations of antebellum homes, and tourists come from far and wide to see them. But Natchez was also a center of the cotton trade, and had one of the biggest slave markets in the country. Filmmakers Suzannah Herbert and Darcy McKinnon made a documentary about this beautiful and complicated place, and how its residents wrestle with which story should be told to visitors.
June 18, 2026
A sale of enslaved people in Charleston, South Carolina, 1854.
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How the Slave Trade Built Charleston

The city's prosperity grew from a system that trafficked human beings and turned their lives into profit.
by Livia Gershon, Gregory E. O’Malley via JSTOR Daily on June 9, 2026
Barney Frank speaking in the Massachusetts house chamber as a state representative from Boston.

Barney Frank, My Dad, and the Boston They Knew

A personal remembrance of Barney Frank that explores Boston politics, urban renewal, and the generation of reformers who reshaped the city.
by Dan Friedman via Mother Jones on June 8, 2026
Museum guests peering at a quilt depicting Frederick Douglass.

The Uncertain Future of the Smithsonian’s Smallest Museum

The Anacostia Community Museum was a pioneer in preserving Black history. Will that be enough to save it from President Trump?
by Camille Borders via The Atlantic
This publication restricts nonsubscriber access to some or all of its articles.
on June 3, 2026
Collage of three cowboys on horses holding communist flags.

When Cowboys Fought Capitalism

Texas Democrats can win by reviving the state's forgotten populist tradition of labor activism and working-class politics.
by David Griscom via UnHerd on May 28, 2026
Overhead image taken of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library.

The Hollow Man in the Arena

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has been the loudest booster of the new Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library. And T.R.’s conservation legacy? Not so much.
by Alex Heard via Re:Public on May 27, 2026
A young Bernie Sanders getting sworn in.

Bernie’s Burlington Was an Experiment in Practical Socialism

When Bernie Sanders was mayor of Burlington, the spirit of socialism showed up in everything from snowplows to poetry.
by Dan Chiasson, Natasha Hakimi Zapata via Jacobin
This publication restricts nonsubscriber access to some or all of its articles.
on May 21, 2026
The Atlas Obscura Podcast
Podcast
The Atlas Obscura Podcast

100 Years of the LA Central Library

The LA Central Library has always been unique. It doesn’t look like a typical big city library, many people didn’t want it to be built in the first place, and, in 1986, a fire affected more than one million of its books. But the library endured, and is now celebrating its 100th anniversary.
May 21, 2026
The US Continental Divide at the top of Loveland Pass, Colorado, 1964.
partner

The Invention of the Continental Divide

A Civil War-era push for unity helped transform a little-known geographic boundary into a powerful symbol of American identity.
by Matthew Wills, James D. Drake via JSTOR Daily on May 11, 2026
The announcement of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, in Philadelphia.

The American Revolution’s Triumphant Story of Democracy and Freedom Overlooks Loyalists

Matthias Aspden was a wealthy Philadelphia businessman who remained faithful to Britain. As a result, he lost his home, property and sense of belonging.
by Kimberly Nath via The Conversation on May 7, 2026
Ronald Reagan in Disneyland, 1955

How Disneyland Remade American Politics

Orange County had almost no history of its own. It turned out to be the perfect place to invent America’s.
by Beverly Gage via The Free Press
This publication restricts nonsubscriber access to some or all of its articles.
on May 7, 2026
Children playing in street in New York City.

New York Play Streets at the Turn of the Century

City streets were a theater for much of the turn-of-the-century Progressive Era’s moral dramas about urban life.
by Alexandra Miller via The Metropole on May 5, 2026
A Muslim prays inside a mosque.

Texas GOP’s Anti-Sharia Crusade

You can forgive historians if they are overwhelmed by a sense of déjà vu as they witness the hate and vitriol aimed at Muslims by Texas Republicans today.
by Michael Phillips, Rick Halperin, Hadi Jawad via Dallas Observer on April 27, 2026
A view of Rainy Lake on Mallard Island in Minnesota.

The Minnesota Hermit Who Changed Environmental History

Ernest Oberholtzer is one of the most important—and overlooked—champions of protecting nature in the U.S.
by Evelyn McDonnell via Zócalo Public Square on April 22, 2026
The Egg building under construction.

Empire Plaza State of Mind

The Plaza is a case study in the lengths to which New York’s leaders have gone to find gargantuan sums of money to enact wild new visions for the state.
by Charlie Dulik via The Paris Review on April 21, 2026
A statue of Simón Bolívar, one of the seven such tributes to Latin American leaders and liberators on the Avenue of the Americas.

The Spirit of the Americas Against the Donroe Doctrine

NYC’s Avenue of the Americas reflects New Deal–era unity. Día de las Américas revives that spirit, promoting solidarity, self-determination, and equality.
by Michael Galant, Matt Kirkegaard via Jacobin
This publication restricts nonsubscriber access to some or all of its articles.
on April 14, 2026
New Cut Road, Wadmalaw Island.

On Learning About the Enslaved Men Who Dug South Carolina’s Lowcountry Canals

It is easy to get disoriented in the grassy marshes, and in researching a place where written records are scarce.
by Virginia McGee Richards via Literary Hub on April 10, 2026
The Mexican side of the Rio Grande on December 21, 2022.
partner

How the Rio Grande Was Engineered into a Border

Twisting waters once blurred the boundary, but twentieth-century engineering turned the Rio Grande into a fixed, policed line.
by Matthew Wills, C. J. Alvarez via JSTOR Daily on March 30, 2026
Person standing on a rock, others on shore, in the Great Salt Lake.

Troubled Salt Waters

Caroline Tracey’s “Salt Lakes” is less the jeremiad of an outraged conservationist than a tender bildungsroman.
by Kyle Paoletta via The Baffler
This publication restricts nonsubscriber access to some or all of its articles.
on March 18, 2026
Lord Howe evacuating Boston.

‘Evacuation Day’ and the American Character

How the British occupation of Boston shaped our political sensibility.
by Lindsay M. Chervinsky via The Bulwark on March 17, 2026
Mono Lake, California.

The Lonely Lake That Revolutionized American Environmental Law

In the 1970s and 1980s, battles to preserve Mono Lake set new protection precedents.
by Caroline Tracey via Zócalo Public Square on March 16, 2026
The Wilderness, 1887 photograph of an empty crossroads in the woods, by William H. Tipton.

An Unsettling Civil War Photograph

An image from the Battle of the Wilderness.
by Rachel Eisendrath via The Yale Review on March 16, 2026
Mount Rushmore range as a sleeping Plains Indian with the presidents' faces in his belly.

Who Makes the Meaning of Mount Rushmore?

The Black Hills, and the memorial carved there, sit at the center of debates about American history and identity.
by Matthew Davis via Zócalo Public Square on March 5, 2026
Collage of map, buildings, photos, Civil War monuments, and important documents.

What is The Birth of a Capital?

The story of Reno, a thriving Black DC neighborhood erased by local elites — and Frederick Law Olmstead‘s son.
by Neil Flanagan via The Birth of a Capital on March 1, 2026
Black NPS ranger sitting in front of a plantation house museum in Natchez.

In Natchez, Black History Is Big Business

Suzannah Herbert’s new documentary explores a town grappling with its history of enslavement.
by Morgan Jerkins via Harper's Bazaar on February 24, 2026
A band performing

How Community Organizers are Amplifying Oregon’s Black Music History

A community music archive preserves the history of Black arts and culture in Portland—and fortifies its future.
by Jaclyn Moyer via High Country News
This publication restricts nonsubscriber access to some or all of its articles.
on February 20, 2026
Frank Matsura with his camera.

The Little-Known Photographer Who Documented a Changing Okanogan, Washington

A century later, Frank Matsura’s images are still at the heart of families’ memories.
by Taylor Roseweeds via High Country News
This publication restricts nonsubscriber access to some or all of its articles.
on February 19, 2026
“Smuggler Kelly and his Legend” mural on a brick wall.

Smuggler Lawrence Kelly on the Salish Sea

Separating fact from folklore in Kelly’s life is no easy task. Secondhand reminiscences and nautical gossip layer much of the available information.
by Paul Lindholdt via Commonplace on February 17, 2026
A historical marker in a national park.

History Is Not a Buffet

The National Park Service safeguards artifacts from theft and trails from erosion. It should protect public truth with the same seriousness.
by Christopher Keyes via Re:Public on February 13, 2026
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