Excerpts

The cover's design, a black-and-white data display, traces its origins to the stars.

A brief history of the printed ballot.

Voting has always been restricted to empower a minority.

In 1874, Democrats picked up an astounding 94 seats in the 293-seat House.

Many on both sides are worried about the party’s leftward swing. They say it’s a deviation from the mainstream. It’s not.

Women could make history this year — but there's still a long way to go before there's equal representation.

Minnesota’s Farmer-Labor Party, the most successful labor party in US history, is rich in lessons for challenging the two-party system.

In late-nineteenth-century America, the miscarried fetus became a scientific specimen.

Some years the virus would wipe out a tenth of the population, earning New Orleans the nickname "Necropolis."

His job was to protect the birds. But nobody was there to protect him.

Liberal politicians should trumpet a vision of masculinity that incorporates the best qualities of LBJ and Humphrey.

As the city reached for the sky, those down below had to scramble for daylight.

In 1928, women wanted more than just the vote. They wanted to do everything a man could do. Even fly the Atlantic.

A history of the United States meddling in the elections of other countries.

Who sets the time? After the first repeal of Daylight Saving Time in 1919, the question only became harder to answer.

How statistical data came to rule public policy.

The promise and perils of left populism.

The man who wrote "Soul Man" gives a master class on how code-switching through music helped catalyze the Civil Rights Movement.

The war created a new world, an alternate reality distinct from what most people before 1914 expected their lives to be.

Voter suppression tactics have roots in Southern history dating to the Antebellum era.

A new documentary tells the history of the big top.

Why is there still no memorial to Paine, the immigrant whose writing galvanized the American Revolution?

The first Jewish member of Congress was a virulent nativist and anti-immigration troll who ended his life in an insane asylum.

Follow the paths of eight immigrants, whose stories are based on real laws and historically documented scenarios.

You can’t tell the story of America without the story of labor.

Not directly. But it's more complicated than you think.

A nonprofit claims its request for genealogical records from state archives was brushed aside in favor of Ancestry’s request.

Its purpose 150 years ago was to incorporate former slaves into the nation.

On the job with a pair of men who dig up bodies for a living.

What can their fascination with the supernatural teach us about life in our own post-truth times?

Our mortuary conventions reveal a lot about our relation to the past.

Although its owner died in 1865, many visitors to the Morris-Jumel Mansion still come just to see her.

History reminds us that firm and sometimes violent opposition to racists is a time-honored American tradition.

From the day it was inaugurated, the Statue of Liberty has symbolized the tensions between national independence and universal human rights.

Some white Northerners see a flag rooted in racism as a symbol of patriotism.

A school district owns the property where the bodies of 95 black convict-lease prisoners from Jim Crow era were buried.

Revisiting the wreckage on the centenary of the armistice.

Enslaved people used codes to mark graves on plantation grounds.

Why the statesmen of the Roman Republic had such an influence on the patriots of the Revolutionary era.

He came to this country a refugee, and paid his debt forward.

Georgia GOP candidate Brian Kemp is using a tried-and-tested formula designed to erode and corrode American democracy.

A review of Jill Lepore's new book, which she has called the most ambitious single-volume American history written in generations.

Three recent books challenge the tech industry's myths of self-reliance and prescience.

When creating ethical immigration policy, it is important to consider the history of U.S. relations with countries like Honduras.

Predictions of society coming undone reflect deep anxieties over the divisions roiling the country, but these professed fears about our future actually provide hope.

The fable of George Washington's prayer was meant to foster religious tolerance, not paint him as a pious leader.

Trump and other peddlers of angry rhetoric may reap short-term gains, but history suggests they will provoke a fearsome backlash.

Poet Joshua Rivkin’s new book about Cy Twombly is “stranger and more personal than a biography.”

Architectural history in an era of capitalist ruin.

I was raised to venerate Lee the principled patriot—but I want no association with Lee the defender of slavery.