Excerpts

When the CIA distributed banned books behind the Iron Curtain.

Railroad photography helped sell an “empty” American West—carefully framing out the people already living there.

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

A nation that helped shape modern war reporting is now treated as peripheral.

The Court’s new ruling revives religion in public life—but is it restoring tradition, or reshaping the boundary between church and state?

After World War II ended, the fascist propagandist and poet Ezra Pound returned to the U.S., where he was met with accusations of treason — and literary prizes.

A new history of satire wants to limit the genre to its political ramifications, but satirists are often interested in the whole person.

We have severely undercounted the number of COVID deaths, scientists say.

NASA has always balanced the fantastical against the sensible. What happens when the scales start to tip?

Bell’s and Edison’s inventions turned executives into “dictators.”

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

Data-driven epidemiology and the professionalization of public health.

Why the conflict strengthens Israel, weakens the United States, and devastates ordinary Iranians.

The first March on Washington was a madcap affair, but in May of 1894, some 10,000 citizens descended on D.C., asking for a jobs bill.

A 19th century reality show that pushed “peace on earth, good will toward men, but death to interest on bonds.”

The reporting subject I knew best.

His work with gang members in Chicago shows how much he valued the part played by young people in the Black freedom struggle.

Efforts to control Black mobility—from early passports to the Fugitive Slave Act—laid much of the groundwork for today’s border regimes.

Essentializing the Delta-Chicago connection used to be a white-boy game.

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

1619 Project reignited debate over slavery’s origins, exposing tensions between continuity vs change in U.S. history and competing “origin stories.”

The landmark resolution calls for an apology and contributions to a reparations fund, without specifying an amount.

Donald Trump didn’t bring back the Monroe Doctrine. That was the work of the 26th president — and many of the presidents who succeeded him.

The word can morph from noun to verb to adjective, from dog to human, from female to male. What will it do next?

In securing US support for Britain during WWII, lords Lothian and Halifax set the standard for future ambassadors.

The largest high school student uprising in Cincinnati, Ohio, during the 1960s involved students sitting on their butts.

A new book takes a fresh look at a well-studied political figure, showing him to be a master of party politics.

Short-term defeat does not end long-term influence.

The United States government has in fact recompensed injured groups in the past. So why won’t it do it for Black Americans?

Massive data centers are rising to power AI. The hype echoes how the railroad barons once sold their vision of the future leaving the public paying the costs.

Breaking history: A key moment in the Revolution looks different through John Burgoyne’s eyes.

Lewis Mumford identified the religious language used by techno-optimists as evidence of a belief system shaping our "seemingly rational age."

On the origins of pickiness.

Ross probably didn’t sew the first American flag, but she was one of many craftswomen whose wartime labor helped build a nation.

Mussel Slough reminds us that the Feds never fight fair and that people can rise up and reform the system.

Nazi influence grew in 1930s America via the Bund, sparking backlash, mob resistance, and major FBI efforts to expose and dismantle spy networks.

U.S. justifies Latin American intervention by distorting realities, linking 1902 Colombia actions to 2026 Venezuela controversy.

Revisiting U.S. attitudes toward the Cherokee shows how the rhetoric of oppressors stays consistent. The rationalizations for ethnic cleansing do not change.

There has never been a moral and historical reckoning with the horrors inflicted by the Allied firebombing of Japan during World War II.

On the recovery of queer history long obscured by state censorship.

The president has often defined his foreign policy approach in opposition to the Bush administration’s, but he is following in its footsteps.

An image from the Battle of the Wilderness.

Caroline Tracey’s “Salt Lakes” is less the jeremiad of an outraged conservationist than a tender bildungsroman.

How a fringe idea made its way from rural France to the heart of American power.

Antiwar movements succeed through broad, focused mass action, not sectarian rhetoric or liberal compromise, using Vietnam-era lessons for today.

His crimes against women and his 'too big to fail' persona created immeasurable harm.

Who paved the road to Trump's war?

We still have a lot to learn from David Lilienthal’s account of his years running the Tennessee Valley Authority.

Americans took to the streets to defend their neighbors in the nineteenth century, too.

For most of history, parents couldn’t buy their kids dolls, action figures, or the like. Then playtime became big business.