Excerpts

The mirage of the singer's soaring success echoes the mirage of post-war tranquility at home.

In 1932, Hellen Keller offered some advice for the “perplexed businessman.”

Henry Theophilus Finck sought to transform the modern United States, by appealing to Americans' tastebuds.

50 years later, Philip Levine's poem, "They Feed They Lion," helps us remember and understand that time.

The show's rollicking one-liners and bawdy routines paved the way for cutting-edge television satire.

Mamie Phipps Clark came up with the oft-cited “doll test” and provided expert testimony in Brown v. Board of Education.

Confederate monuments were essential pieces of white supremacist propaganda.

Before Linda Brown became the lead plaintiff in Brown v. Board of Education, a generation of black girls and teens led the charge against “separate but equal.”

American portraiture with its visual allure and pictorial storytelling made gun ownership desirable.

Sixty years after the decision, it’s worth remembering it took Congress's Civil Rights Act to finally smash Jim Crow.

The enduring impact of President Johnson’s Crime Commission.

The Kerner report neglected that police were not simply careless with black lives; they deliberately sought to punish black lives.

The Communist Party fought for racial equality in the South, specifically Alabama, where segregation was most oppressive.

Ten years after 'Brown v. Board of Education', Martin Luther King Jr. condemned how little had changed in the nation's classrooms.

Hobsbawm saw his political hopes crumble. He used that defeat to tell the story of our age.

Introducing a new digital history project focused on the ways Americans voted from 1788 to 1825.

How congressional conservatives undermined the civil rights movement through the Tax Reform Act of 1969.

The Lee and Jackson statues were erected not to mourn their deaths, but to glorify their character.

Excavations at a ranch in the southern High Plains show how generations of people adapted to an iconic Western landscape.

A photographer travels to the heart of Appalachia to spend time with the area's last surviving black former coal miners.

His racism and intolerance have always been in evidence; only slowly did he begin to understand how to use them to his advantage.

In ignoring the messy realities of westward expansion, McCullough’s "The Pioneers" is both incomplete and dull.

DC v. Heller recognized an individual right to possess a firearm under the Constitution. Here’s why the case was wrongly decided.

On Ancestry's dangerous move to make it harder to discern which white families owned slaves.

Anna Jarvis spent years fighting the holiday’s commercialization, but that may have hastened its descent into Hallmark territory.

How the Vermont senator went from a third-party independent to a 2020 frontrunner.

What a forgotten trove of videotapes reveals about the man who rewrote America’s political script.

Johnson’s impeachment was driven by his refusal to rid the country of the lingering effects of slavery.

Exploitation and predatory pricing drove the transformation of the beef industry – and created the model for modern agribusiness.

Before the Roe decision, at least 68 South Carolina clergymen actively counseled women on where they should receive abortions.

In the wake of devastating floods, one writer reflects on the importance of place to Great Plains Indians.

Before the 1990s, evangelical Christians were busier resettling newly arrived refugees than trying to keep them out.

You can hone in on a specific location and visualize how it has evolved between the Cryogenian Period and the present.

The West's history is full of stories of white Americans taking the law into their own hands to beat back nonwhite populations.

In Brazil, some descendants of defeated Confederate immigrants still believe the war for secession was a noble cause.

The extraordinary woman known as the ‘Angel of the Battlefield’ eventually founded the Red Cross.

Why did I never recognize all the important and valuable stories my mother told me as "history"?

Michael Kimmage considers "The Ideas That Made America: A Brief History" by Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen.

Looking at a scientist’s FBI file.

Walter Jones and the unintended consequences of the War Crimes Act of 1996.

Outlining America's complex relationship and shared history with Puerto Rico and questions about sovereignty.

America’s obsession with beef was born of conquest and exploitation.

How did enslaved mothers contend with the possibility that their children could be sold away from them?

The reparations struggle is about remembering that America was built on slavery, but also about fighting for all working people.

Every four years, political parties document their positions in written platforms. How often do women's issues appear in the text?

Megachurches represent an enduring model of ecclesial organization in Protestantism.

The critical role that banking played in the political struggles of early American history.

On the eve of the Civil War, a nightmare at sea turned into one of the greatest rescues in maritime history.

Policies of de jure racial segregation and a history of state-sponsored violence continue to have an impact on African Americans.

The rise and fall of the Post Office from Tocqueville to Fred Rogers.