Excerpts

Reading Silent Spring today, in the hazy reddish glow of climate catastrophe, is both an exhilarating and a melancholy pleasure.

The Chinese Hospital in San Francisco is still one-of-a-kind.

But the COVID-19 pandemic exposes its weaknesses.

Before Earth Day made a name for the environmental movement, a massive oil spill put a spotlight on the dangers of pollution.

How a scholarship helped — and didn't help — descendants of victims of the 1923 Rosewood racial massacre.

Lessons from a century ago.

Just like today, brass and bureaucrats ignored warnings, and sent troops overseas despite the consequences.

Visiting the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis.

The afterlife of Vivian Gornick's "The Romance of American Communism" shows that we bear the weight of dead generations—and sometimes living ones, too.

In 1625, New England’s “hideous and desolate” isolation suddenly began to seem a God-given blessing in disguise.

Naming the first people to fall sick often leads to abuse.

If the Democratic Party won’t listen to the left, it should at least listen to itself from 30 years ago.

We’re repeating a lot of the same mistakes from the 1918 “Spanish Flu” H1N1 outbreak.

That the federal government created this health care system for merchant mariners in the early American republic will surprise many.

J.B. Jackson’s 1976 essay on the evolution of the American garage displays his rare ability to combine deep erudition with eloquent and plainspoken analysis.

Myspace changed the way we discovered music and fell apart after conquering the world.

Social distancing isn’t a new idea—it saved thousands of American lives during the last great pandemic.

“Growing your own vegetables is great; beating Nazis is great. I think we’re all nostalgic for a time when anything was that simple.”

Official responses to the yellow fever epidemic of 1793 shows that the refusal to accept responsibility can have catastrophic consequences.

On Rousas Rushdoony's political thought and lasting influence on the Christian right.

The conversation around race after Hurricane Katrina echoed discourse from another New Orleans disaster 150 years before.

Good thing he had other talents.

What 1619 has become to the history of American slavery, 1688 is to the history of American antislavery.

Four new books show how different, and maybe also why.

The forgotten environmental action that pointed the path forward for the left.

Suspending his presidential campaign might be the best way to advance Sanders’s movement, but it could leave some supporters bitter.

A very real story of southern degradation and decay that made national headlines in the fall of 1932.

It was a lesson they'd learned from experience.

The lessons of the 1918 flu pandemic.

A look at how Jim Crow affected the treatment of African Americans fighting the Spanish flu.

During the AIDS crisis, different contingents of the LGBTQ movement set aside their differences to prioritize mutual care.

Until a century or so ago, almost no one lived alone; now many endure shutdowns and lockdowns on their own. How did modern life get so lonely?

Far from making Americans crave stability, the pandemic underscores how everything is up for grabs.

Expropriated Indigenous land is the foundation of the land-grant university system.

A new book looks at the lives of Jewish professors who sought asylum in the U.S. and were denied entry.

A review of "The Idealist: Wendell Willkie’s Wartime Quest to Build One World."

A look back at the so-called “Spanish Flu," how it affected the U.S., and why it’s often overlooked today.

The influenza pandemic did long-lasting damage to relationships in some American communities. Could the mistrust have been prevented?

People comparing covid-19 and AIDS may obscure more than they clarify.

Sarah Collins Rudolph survived the 1963 church bombing that killed her sister and three other girls. She's still waiting on restitution and an apology.

A story of quarantine.

Dorothy Thompson finds a room of her own.

This is not the first time that democratic governance appeared to be under assault.

At a time when questions about women's rights in marriage roiled society, women readers took to the pages of cheap books about husband-murdering wives.

When we mythologize the ’60s, we lose sight of what’s truly ahead of us.

Though the "electricity biscuit" thesis is plausible, killjoy historians need more evidence.

Past public health crises inspired innovations in infrastructure, education, fundraising and civic debate—and cleaned up animal carcasses from the streets.

In times of crisis, it has often been the wealthy who get bailed out.

A biographer of Day talks about what we can learn from the iconic activist.

Like so many black scientists past, the African who brought inoculation to the American colonies never got his due.