Excerpts

A new history of the Mets tries to turn the pain of losing into the struggle of class politics.

Within a generation, Jewish immigrant women had pulled off some of the most combative and highly organized labor actions in American history.

Public service demands resilience—not perfection.

The city's prosperity grew from a system that trafficked human beings and turned their lives into profit.

The statement that shaped U.S. foreign policy for decades rose out of a Cold War ideology full of falsehood and excessively alarmist rhetoric.

The jazz legend fought for nearly 80 years to clear his father of racially motivated charges.

The global politics of 1776.

The ascendance of socialists in the West during the early 1900s, their legacy, and their ultimate dissolution provide lessons of hope and warning.

The effort to transform the United States’ founding document into a vehicle for egalitarian politics.

The federal court suffers simultaneously from lawless leadership and chronic understaffing. Let's fix both problems at once.

Two books about the 1856 caning of a senator show how words can incite violence—and also help defeat it.

A review of Joseph Ellis's reassessment of the Founding, arguing that slavery and Indigenous dispossession were central contradictions of 1776.

The acclaimed historian, who died at the age of 92 this week, spent decades at the center of a debate about the founding of the United States.

In the first half of the 20th-Century, the Declaration of Independence underwent an innovative preservation process and a lengthy custody dispute.

It’s never a fair fight when the institutions that determine the acceptable bounds of dissent are the same ones conducting or enabling mass slaughter.

The Trump administration broke an agreement to fund the bipartisan semiquincentennial celebrations, saying it will not “light taxpayer money on fire.”

The semiquincentennial and why nostalgia can’t meet the moment.

To fight against slavery, the author collected true stories then picked up a pen and distilled them into “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”

Institutions are only as strong as their occupants.

A critique of a new history of American sexuality, arguing that queer and trans histories should challenge, not simply expand, traditional narratives.

The United States has seldom waged the sort of campaign now under way in Iran.

The question of how to reckon with America's past of slavery during the celebrations, such as the U.S. semiquincentennial, has a history of controversy.

Americans must live up to “the words that made us.”

Thomas Jefferson began writing the Declaration of Independence 250 years ago this week, and his finest feat was to so perfectly inhabit our collective voice.

The new Obama Presidential Center, in Chicago, is inspiring—but departs from other presidential libraries in a crucial, and risky, way.

A personal remembrance of Barney Frank that explores Boston politics, urban renewal, and the generation of reformers who reshaped the city.

Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Gordon Wood talks about pamphlets, changes in the media environment, and the current state of historical writing.

A response to Wood's most recent piece in The Weekly Standard.

Reflections on the creativity of the founders — and on a few of the historians who have set out to understand them.

Unable to agree on how to interpret the American story, the country’s schools, universities, and political institutions have stopped trying to tell it at all.

What William Grimes wanted John Quincy Adams to know about freedom on the 50th anniversary of the country’s founding.

With biting satire, Alan Dunn captured how 20th-century architectural trends left everyday Americans astonished, baffled, and enraged.

From the 1970s-era L.A. Aztecs to the 2026 World Cup, the game too often sidelines those who built it.

History knows the First Lady as a hysterical widow and a lavish spender. A recent biographer chooses to highlight her mental fortitude and political prowess.

A new book provides an interesting look at the economic history of the early U.S. but fails as a biography.

Introducing a month-long celebration of great Americans, starting with the author of the Declaration of Independence.

The John Birch Society, the Anti-Defamation League, and the American tradition of infiltrating and exposing radical organizations.

A post-Watergate law makes Presidential records government property. The Trump Administration has declared it unconstitutional.

In a largely male dominated field, early female writers found a way to make a substantial impact in the film industry.

Robert Sheckley absorbed Freud and worried about modernity as the unleashing of fantasies old and new.

How she transformed public health in her fight against lead poisoning.

The discovery of a forgotten burial place outside Chattanooga sheds light on a century of racial discrimination and raises questions about the path forward.

Families turned to habeas corpus to recover enlisted sons, forcing a constitutional showdown over military power.

Abraham Lincoln’s faith in the Declaration of Independence ultimately influenced Walt Whitman’s harsh but optimistic appraisal of the American experiment.

A snapshot of hip-hop’s living history.

It has been a century since the onset of the president’s paralyzing illness. What if he had been more forthcoming about it?

Analyzing voyages to and from Haiti in the years surrounding the Haitian Revolution.

It was ‘the Good War,’ the ‘war to end all wars.’ So why has World War I been largely forgotten by Americans?

How the need for uranium during WWII led the Allied governments to turn a blind eye to colonial exploitation.

Arkansas in the world, the world in Arkansas.