Excerpts

Celebrating immigrants on the nation's birthday.

The rollback of LGBTQ rights echoes a deeply consequential chapter of American history: the Lavender Scare.

In working through the Winter case files, I often felt pinpricks of déjà vu: an exact turn of phrase, an absurdly specific expenditure.

Establishing freedom of religion was a hard-fought success of the American Founding. Today we are still fighting.

What J.D. Vance excludes from the history of the Civil War and immigration.

Columbia University as security state.

On the origin and growth of the Moral Mondays movement.

Challenges, opportunities, stakes.

The legacy of right-wing ideologies in California.

The list of nearly 250 includes the famous, the obscure and, in some cases, the intentionally controversial.

The author's half-forgotten masterpiece, Benito Cereno, provides fascinating insight into issues of slavery, freedom, individualism—and Islamophobia.

Lawmakers knew the Fourteenth Amendment would apply to the children of immigrants.

The archive silences the voices of Black women, invalidating the realities of Black women and subjecting enslaved and free(d) women to epistemic violence.

How William F. Buckley Jr. turned his father’s private convictions and prejudices into a major political movement.

Los Angeles has a history of Latinx protest; one that is often marred by police violence.

Mount Rushmore and storytelling at America’s national parks.

At the founding of America, leaders predicted that a concentration of wealth would weaken the republic.

Coming to terms with free-state slavery through historic buildings and public history.

A discipline born from the study of the Holocaust faces its contradictions as Israel stands accused of the “crime of crimes.”

When McCarthy stalked the groves of academe.

Red Scare can be read as solid history of the years it depicts—and chilling prophecy of the years to come.

How Claire McCardell changed women’s fashion.

During the Reagan revolution, Democrats settled on a new way to win—and it’s destroying them now.

The torturers have been revising, the gestapos have been busy, and the prisons have been full for generations.

This opinion is a milestone in the rule of law and is regularly cited by conservative and liberal justices alike.

Jimmy Swaggart utilized his charisma to overcome not one, but two sex scandals.

At the turn of the century in upstate New York, one tiny town learned there was money to make in the jailing of Chinese migrants.

He believes in Federalist 70’s “Energy in the Executive.”

'Inherit the Wind' changed how people understand, and remember, the legendary Scopes trial.

Trump is only the latest to embrace a costly and immoral tactic.

Jails have been foundational to immigration enforcement for over a century—and have always operated with a staggering absence of oversight and public awareness.

The poem that became a hymn to the nation came about in troubled, polarizing times.

Two stories from the 19th century about government records being falsified to foment distrust of nonwhite Americans.

How Joseph Kurihara lost his faith in America.

Long before the new detention facility in Florida, the reptile has featured in the fantasies of Southern racists.

A dark mystery shocked America in the early 1990s, from prime-time shows to Congress. It’s largely been forgotten. It shouldn’t be.

Truths self-evident no more.

So why are we still surprised when the tide of blood reaches our own shores?

Signed into law 90 years ago, labor’s onetime ‘magna carta’ is now a very dead letter.

For a brief window at the end of the Cold War, British alt-rock band Jesus Jones tapped into global feelings of optimism and hope.

On the long history of governments attempting to restrict access to documents about their inner workings.

The semaphore towers of the Hudson.

On memory, erasure, and the return of indigenous presence.

A new book offers a fresh perspective on the resistance of enslaved women and their interactions with the law.

Toni Morrison was an editor for 12 years, even as she wrote her own masterpieces. I spoke to her authors about being edited by an icon.

Donald Trump recently deployed California’s National Guard to repress protests in LA. The National Guard has a long history of breaking up protests and strikes.

Revisiting history shows that violence and constitutional disputes are nothing new in US politics.

How 13 colonies came together.

This facility’s purpose fits the classic model, and its existence points to serious dangers ahead for the country.

A new book examines the aggressive masculinity that the editors of the Partisan Review brought to their art and literary criticism.