Excerpts

As a Native person, I believe “This Land Is Your Land” falls flat.

Throughout the early 20th century, food corporations created advertisement campaigns directed at women.

The candidate’s years as an anti-busing crusader cannot be forgotten—or readily forgiven.

Why we still read Orwell’s book of prophecy.

Their 1964 collaboration, "Nothing Personal," brought together aspects of American life and culture through photographs and text.

America’s long history of predatory lending.

26 pirates were put to death in Rhode Island on July 19, 1723. Their flag, and everything it stood for, hung with them.

Freeing Thoreau from layers of caricature that have long distorted his legacy.

Law and protest in Durham, North Carolina.

In an exclusive excerpt from his new book, 'Calder: The Conquest of Time,' Jed Perl reveals a hidden side of the artist.

The evolution of the iconic smiley face and some of its not so happy connotations.

How the New Left, urban renewal, safety concerns, and child psychology affected the design of New York playgrounds.

Looking at the reporter’s life through five houses in Baltimore.

Ann Hodges was hit by a meteorite in her Alabama home in 1954.

The dark origins of the first mascots.

The story of Vinegar Hill, a historically African American neighborhood in Charlottesville, Virginia.

John Canaday's poems look at nuclear weapons from the intimate perspectives of its developers.

Nostalgia and technological innovation paved the way for the rise of model-train giant Lionel.

A new book on James Buchanan and public-choice theory explores the Southern roots of the free-market right.

The correspondence of Generals Dwight D. Eisenhower and George C. Marshall leading up to D-Day.

The Allied invasion of France was an important step in the war against the Nazis. But it was by no means a turning point.

Reparations for African-Americans has been a hot topic on the presidential campaign trail, but the debate goes back centuries.

What does it look like when city names are replaced by their most Wikipedia’ed resident?

The state prides itself on its abolitionist history. But its identity has been shaken by recent racist incidents.

When it came to gathering refugees, the waiting room of the US consulate was probably the closest thing to Rick’s Café Américain.

In the 1930s, park planning was pretty.

A "yearbook" documents the U.S. military occupation of Nagasaki in the aftermath of the atomic bomb.

The historical record is clear: democracy was only won when poor people waged disruptive class struggle against the rich.

Southern newspapers played a major role in racial violence. Do they owe their communities an apology?

It didn't go exactly as planned. But for TAC's founder, this is where his populist antiwar movement may have begun.

During the Civil War, surrendering was an honorable way of accepting defeat — under the right circumstances.

Almost 60 years later, a mother regrets her decision to send her 6-year-old into a hate-filled environment.

A new study on the toll of contract buying in Chicago during the 1950s and 1960s: $3 billion to $4 billion in lost black wealth.

The Olin Foundation funded the Federalist Society, seminars for judges, and much more.

Oak Bluffs is a complex community that elite families, working-class locals and social-climbing summerers all claim as their own.

Our young nation was very poor, the war was very expensive, and Congress and the states wanted everyone else to pay.

At first glance, frontier towns near the U.S.-Mexico border seem oblivious both of history and of the current political reality.

Ava DuVernay’s miniseries shows why more children had to stand trial as adults than at any other time before this 1989 case.

A century after women won the right to vote, The Atlantic reflects on the grueling fight for suffrage—and what came after.

Revealing these materials could be considered “Hoover’s revenge.”

How the 1960s Black Is Beautiful movement inspired her latest Fenty fashion collection.

Admiral William D. Leahy was instrumental in bringing the Allies together to agree upon the invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe.

Our age-based laws have never made sense. With modern science, they make even less sense.

President Trump’s skirting around Congress to sell arms to Saudi Arabia is only the latest example of presidential overreach.

The furor that erupted throughout New York City cannot be disentangled from the long history of the urban oasis.

Amid reports that Trump may pardon accused or convicted war criminals, it's worth remembering Nixon's response to the My Lai Massacre.

A history sheds light on venture capital’s ties to the military-industrial complex.

It was the original idea behind Medicare itself.

The international ambitions of the US slaveholding class and the abolitionist movement that brought them down.

I reviewed publications from the founding era, and discovered that “executive power” doesn’t imply what most scholars thought.