Excerpts

Revolutionary ideals of liberty exposed the hypocrisy of slavery, sparking early antislavery movements.

How the concept of "deterrence" went from explaining criminal behavior to becoming a nuclear strategy.

The controversial chaos of the Angola Prison Rodeo.

How the massive oil company's in-house magazine became a wellspring of cosmopolitan humanism.

At a pivotal moment in the Cold War, the decision was made that the President would be ultimately responsible for atomic weapons.

On the nation’s relationship to George Washington’s legacy.

Teenage nerds in New Jersey were hacking before the PC and the Internet.

For decades, the US seriously pursued the idea of ‘peaceful nuclear explosions.’

On George Washington’s farewell address of 1796.

Since the founding generation, there has been a rational consistent fear that the office of president is powerful to be constrained by democratic institutions.

Charting a new path after the Chavez revelations.

Origins and evolution of regulations on the fur trade and seal hunting in Alaska.

How did the Ku Klux Klan spread across the South? Part of its journey depended on a code for secret correspondence.

Trump uses the artist’s work—like other cultural icons—to promote Gestapo tactics and nativist ideas.

In the 1970s and ’80s, rank-and-file workers often took risks to attack a culture of corruption in the labor movement — including Mafia-controlled union locals.

Debt-driven suburban growth fueled racial and economic inequality in housing, often worsened by policy.

Exodus and the American Civil War.

How a 1970s Proposal to ‘Export Products, Not People’ North of the Border Got Rejected.

Like Bush's invasion of Iraq, Trump and Netanyahu's joint attack on Iran is being sold on myths.

Pasquale Paoli was a “small fish fighting an entire empire.” Four thousand miles away, the founding fathers were watching and taking notes.

A new book traces a global upheaval stretching from Philadelphia and London to Freetown and Madras.

Are pioneer cemeteries key to the Iowa prairie’s revival, or its final resting place?

There is a line in the Emancipation Proclamation that deserves greater attention.

On the psychology behind the stigmatization of technology rejection.

1890s Populists rose up against capitalism and white supremacy in Texas. Their apparent electoral defeat was rooted in a campaign of terror and white supremacy.

Twisting waters once blurred the boundary, but twentieth-century engineering turned the Rio Grande into a fixed, policed line.

The Clean Air Act gave California the authority to issue tough pollution standards for vehicles, with EPA approval. Now Trump is trying to stop it.

How myth-making about the frontier shaped U.S. national identity, and who it left out.

After four decades of organizing by right-wing tax protesters, U.S. officials have largely stopped enforcing laws against their illegal schemes.

In addition to burning some of his paintings in protest, Ted DeGrazia may also have hidden hundreds of works in Arizona’s Superstition Mountains.

In the 1930s, Americans created thousands of new organizations dedicated to reducing the cost of state and local government.

A history of a sometimes-forgotten Quaker witness.

Hip-hop and Generation X came of age together. As Gen Xers moved through their teenage years in the 1970s and '80s, hip-hop exploded from underground Bronx.

A trove of letters-to-the-editor from the early 1900s show how Arturo Schomburg viewed newspapers as a bulwark against white supremacy throughout the Americas.

A generation of listeners have been shaped by the newest music hardware.

A requiem for the man, the magazine, and the era.

A young consultant’s rise reveals the firm's power and influence, and the growing tension between ethics, profit, and global impact.

Many Americans only know the history of anger and tension with Iran. But it is worth recalling the time when the countries were friends.

For the Supreme Court to accept the Trump administration’s attempt to revoke birthright citizenship, it would have to repudiate the Constitution.

On Wolcott's trailblazing four years of photography with the Farm Security Administration.

What do "Works in Progress" and "Social Text" have in common?

Separating fact from folklore in Kelly’s life is no easy task. Secondhand reminiscences and nautical gossip layer much of the available information.

Escaping the two-party doom loop.

The emergent origins of a folk song.

How the baddest man in the St. Louis underworld failed to become a folk hero.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton believed that she was a person of “superior intelligence and courage.” This fuelled her radical politics—and her descent into bigotry.

The Trump administration’s crackdown on Somalis in Minnesota ignores decades of US intervention that helped produce the violence and displacement Somalis fled.

Long a marker of gender inequality, women turned pockets into a feminist demand.

The Iran War as America's very own Suez crisis.

Native Americans in the 1940s struggled simultaneously to secure voting rights and protect the reservations that formed the basis for their disenfranchisement.