Excerpts

Fifty years of journalism by and for “the rest of us.”

An archaeologist investigates how construction of New York City’s largest reservoir a century ago uprooted thousands of rural residents.

Removing dams from the Klamath River in Northern California seems like a clear win for fish and rivers. Why do some locals hate it?

On the civic meaning behind trends in men's fashion in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The dominance of white for a woman's wedding attire is a relatively modern phenomenon.

Can our 18th-century institutions survive 21st-century technology?

How the shipping container, a dominant force in ocean shipping, came from a truck driver whose invention proved to be too good at its job.

How an alliance between psychologists and advertisers at the turn of the 20th century taught us how to measure (and monetize) human attention.

Kris Kristofferson, authenticity, and country music's "new breed."

The American rebellion was, in many ways, a sideshow to a far greater imperial drama.

Irish people profoundly impacted the American Revolution, fighting on both sides of the war. In return, the Revolution shaped struggles for Irish independence.

Is there more to the story that the New York Times is reporting about the scholarship of historian Kerri Greenidge? Something doesn't add up.

Late 20th-century culture wars over artists like Robert Mapplethorpe and Andres Serrano set the stage for the transgressive Age of Trump.

How a phrase coined during the Depression became a national creed, a global brand, and a vessel for disillusionment.

The battle over Confederate monuments in Dallas.

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

Countries around the world participated in the 1976 bicentennial, in a turning point for US soft power.

Legionnaires’ disease is more prevalent than ever. So how did we forget it?

The popularity of his music signaled the emergence of a very different country.

A racist takeover in Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1898, has reverberated across generations as a reminder of American democracy’s terrifying vulnerability.

Notes toward a liberal patriotism.

Can our unruly national story be squeezed into two vessels?

In 1782, American revolutionaries massacred 96 indigenous Moravian Christians. The victims had attempted to avoid taking sides in the war.

Examining the anatomy of US power.

The Anacostia Community Museum was a pioneer in preserving Black history. Will that be enough to save it from President Trump?

In 1930s New York, Chinese opera was praised uptown but mocked in Chinatown.

In the 1930s, private utilities balked at the task of bringing electricity to rural America. A New Deal agency figured out how to do it instead.

The memoirs of Turkish emigres to the United States in the mid-20th century reveal a fascinating portrait of culture shock—and assimilation.

To find a future for the institution, we need to accurately account for its wildly varying past.

America must look to examples from history and be careful of engaging in catastrophic imperial overreach.

In the wake of vitriolic red-hat patriotism distorting the nation’s history, this essay revisits Frederick Douglass’s deftly critical work to ask.

The conventional telling of America’s origin story leaves out perhaps its greatest heroes.

How a right-wing smear campaign tried to silence the reality of Thomas Jefferson’s life, and in some ways succeeded.

Though the Declaration has become familiar to us, the real meaning behind it is all too obscured.

The hottest resistance talking aheads during Trump 2.0 are academics. What happened?

The physical journey of the Declaration of Independence tells its own story. Its imperfections and endurance reflect those of the America it helped create.

Debunking the mythology around Jack Kemp's famous words about soccer: “Football is democratic, capitalism, whereas soccer is a European socialist—”

As more and more protests make clear, the bodies of Black people playing sports are not outside history. Indeed, they never have been.

The overlooked role of Poland’s partition in the Declaration of Independence.

In 1976, Boston saw the bicentennial celebrations of the United States as an opportunity to revitalize the city.

Gordon Wood chronicled America’s rambunctious democratic culture. It’s giving way to a new deference to authority.

The urban professionals who transformed American cities and tastes and pulled the Democratic Party to the right are a dying breed.

U.S. independence is a story of the entire Western Hemisphere.

America's 50th birthday was marked with toasts and parades. Over time, anniversary celebrations became more extravagant — and more controversial.

How the father of American football taught office men to exercise.

I am yearning to reject something that is not even being sold to me.

Reflections on monuments and public art in Newark, New Jersey.

What an episode of anti-Chinese mob violence in 1885 has to to teach us in today’s era of nativism and ICE raids.

Remembering the civilian losses that have been overshadowed by heroic wartime feats.

Airline deregulation shifted power to corporations, exposing passengers to market-driven policies enforced through state-backed force.