Excerpts

Kennedy had his own secret back channel with Moscow. It may have kept the superpowers from going to war.

Gil Scott-Heron's searing 1970 commentary on the nation's economic priorities.

The success of the 1963 March on Washington hinged on a confluence of factors that aren't yet present for demonstrators today.

The blockbuster refuses to flatten its characters into simple heroes or villains — and that's exactly what makes it so refreshing.

How a now-forgotten classroom murder inflamed the national gun argument.

The March for Our Lives organizers are not an anomaly, but follow in a long tradition of youth activism in America.

Fifteen years after the U.S. invasion, there’s no satisfying answer to the question: What were we doing in Iraq anyway?

The Koch Foundation is often praised for its higher-ed funding, but the money is going to some radical professors.

Errol Morris and the hot cold war.

A preview of Trumpism in 2010 protests against a proposed mosque in lower Manhattan.

The GOP was once the party of protectionism, while the Democrats led the way on free trade.

The bestselling guru's ancient wisdom is unmistakably modern – a disturbing symptom of the social malaise he sets out to cure.

She did not write her most famous work until late in life. Until then, she thought of herself as a poet of the sea.

A 1964 presidential campaign advertisement for Lyndon Baines Johnson.

After Democrats lost in 1876, they set about investigating the new Republican president — only for everything to backfire.

A conversation with Anna Zeide about her book, “Canned: The Rise and Fall of Consumer Confidence in the American Food Industry.”

An collection of audio and video recordings that document Americans' efforts to preserve historic structures.

The 1927 disaster exposed a country divided by stereotypes, united by modernity.

A roundup of historians' commentary about Billy Graham in the wake of his death.

How Americans got so weird about science.

Jeffrey Conner has collected over 1,000 headbadges from old bicycles.

In search of the photographer who captured the Beatles' final concert on film.

When trailers offered a compact version of the American dream.

The radical vision of Wages for Housework.

On country music as a lens through which to trace the corporatization of American farming.

Revisiting the arduous path of 18th-century fur trader Alexander Mackenzie.

The myth that Appalachia is uniformly White lingers, but communities of “Affrilachians” were documented in the 1930s.

Economic analyses of the antebellum era upend the notion that Southern whites were united in their support of slavery.

How Walt Whitman became the quintessential poet of disability and death.

Three new books paint a more nuanced portrait of the American militias whose gun rights have been protected since the founding.

Eric Foner, Walter Johnson, Thavolia Glymph, and Annette Gordon-Reed discuss trends in the study of slavery and emancipation.

What can making now tell us about the past? Or should the past remain untouched?

The University of Virginia has long been a bastion of white supremacy and white supremacy–validating scholarship.

Our launch protocols were designed to bypass checks and balances for a quick retaliation.

Thanks to federal immigration policies, immigration from Ireland has all but dried up.

The myth of Irish slavery has found fertile ground in Internet memes as a way to derail conversation about the need for affirmative action today.

Dozens of newly declassified documents show foreign service staff raising serious concerns about a range of U.S. policies abroad.

Fifty years ago, teenagers organized a multi-school walkout that galvanized the Mexican-American community in Los Angeles.

Willa Cather's life and work broke with the standards of her time.

A review of "Closing the Courthouse Door: How Your Constitutional Rights Became Unenforceable" by Erwin Chemerinsky.

Jeff Bezos is stealing from a 19th-century playbook.

In the 1970s, women and people of color streamed into unions, strikes swept the nation, and employers launched a fierce counterattack.

The rise, fall, and afterlife of George Sterling’s California arts colony.

The fourth president tried all kinds of sanctions to open markets, but still ended up in the War of 1812.

An intimate portrait of a once-prosperous town in a forgotten corner of America.

“The law itself was very, very broad.”

As businesses are pressured to abandon the NRA, one scholar looks at the efficacy of boycotts past.

With its race issue, the magazine is trying a different direction. Can it escape its past?

Student walkouts have changed American history before. Here's how.

To make a more perfect union, don’t look to the Founding Fathers.