Excerpts

While he opposed slavery and southern secession early in his career, as president Andrew Johnson turned out to be an unsightly bigot.

Extending that compassion today could reverse past wrongs.

Fifty years later, the legacy of the National Cancer Act illustrates the need for a broad approach.

“Rescue Me,” on repeat.

Reiner, Stephen Colbert, Jordan Peele, Steve Carrell, Tina Fey, Julia Louis-Dreyfus: Their comedy descends directly from the Works Progress Administration.

The new film is set in a now-bulldozed Black neighborhood, so why is it all about whites and Puerto Ricans? Because it really takes place in Los Angeles.

Two recent books put the reemergence of anti-immigrant sentiment in the Trump era into historical relief.

FDR managed inflation during World War II through government policy. Today’s calamities call for a similar approach.

Scientific research and historical accounts can help us identify and dissect the threat of ‘coercive persuasion.’

"If you read enough sources, you run into cases of slaves spending a lot of time over Christmas crying."

Understanding the battle over immunization—from the pre-Victorian era onward—between public health and the people may help in treating anti-vax sentiment.

On the failed dreams and forgotten ruins of William Hope Harvey.

Sweeping the human story into a cosmic tale is a thrill but we should be wary about what is overlooked in the grandeur.

The holiday favorite is an allegorical prayer for peace.

The Christmas classic, released 75 years ago, conveys many messages beyond having faith in one another.

A sweeping new history traces the rise of characters caught in a Manichaean struggle between good and evil.

A century of tax avoidance later, the dynasties created in the 1900s are going strong.

Why songs of the southland are really northern.

Virginia Tech project finds forgotten Army surveys that reveal World War II lingo and “the good, the bad, the ugly, heroic, not heroic” attitudes of soldiers.

Photographer Drew Gardner painstakingly recreates the images with the notable figures' descendants.

Four decades on, the perpetrators of the El Mozote massacre have not been held to account.

It is fair to ask whether Grant’s prewar experiences define the entirety of his character, and who sets the bar for which public figures deserve commemoration.

As the country grew, each census required greater effort than the last. That problem led to the invention of the punched card – and the birth of an industry.

Some personal reflections from American Historical Association president James H. Sweet on the recent wave of "divisive concepts" laws.

Held across the U.S. in the early 20th century, the events sought to raise awareness about workhorses' poor living conditions.

In the 1930s, Socialist and Communist organizers tried to help Black sharecroppers rise up against their oppressors.

A conversation with the biographer of radical Jewish 'revenge theologian' Meir Kahane.

The maternal health intervention from a century ago that worked.

Counting both uninfected and infected people helps us better understand a pandemic.

The Confederate memorial carving at Georgia’s Stone Mountain is etched with more than a century of racist history. But tearing it down won’t be so easy.

The rise of tactical gun culture among civilians reveals a new front in the U.S. battle against nativist authoritarianism.

How we wound up with the worst of both worlds: thousands of speed-related deaths, and a system of enforcement that is both ineffective and inescapable.

The Age of Revolution inaugurated a new era in modern history defined not only by new democratic institutions but also by despots and charismatic leaders.

The national parks are the closest thing America has to sacred lands, and like the frontier of old, they can help forge our democracy anew.

The plant explorers of the USDA succeeded in bringing the world’s fruits to American supermarkets. But at what human, ecological, and gustatory cost?

Is media bias attributable to corporate power or personal psychology? Upton Sinclair and Walter Lippmann disagreed.

The recent panic over retail theft reveals tensions at the heart of American consumerism.

A Pulitzer historian assesses what we are to make of UVA’s founder, 200 years hence.

We can’t allow the impression of a historical lack of diversity in the art form to limit access to the industry today.

In 1929, Mayor Porter was part of a long history of city figures who perpetuated white supremacy as a foundational and systemic ideal.

She designed Social Security and public works programs that helped bring millions out of poverty. Her work has been largely forgotten.

Thomas Jefferson imagines an unequal gender utopia.

From the Nye Committee to Joe Kent, the fight against war profiteering is a constant struggle.

Muscular Christianity — with scriptural interpretations that can favor “stand your ground” over “turn the other cheek” — has a long tradition in the U.S.

How a story told by a fugitive from slavery became a parable of American banking gone bad.

Museums construct knowledge by constructing objects—literally.

As the GOP undermines Black political rights in the present, some right-wing intellectuals are rationalizing Black disenfranchisement in the past.

If colorblindness rests on the claim that the civil rights movement changed everything, the idea that racism is in our DNA borders on a fatalistic proposition that it changed nothing.

Tammy Wynette and Johnny Cash cancelled gigs in Belfast during the violent 1970s, but Pride played on.

Calls for the court to remain neutral have long been tools for denying Americans rights.