Excerpts

Both France and the United States were born in revolutions that overthrew kings, yet neither has ever stopped searching for a leader to embody the nation.

Atlantic slavery was capitalist, with enslaved workers producing profit and resisting exploitation as a “chattel proletariat.”

From 1958: Is the problem with the Ivory Tower mental or moral?

Confederate iconography undergoes a rethink—and then some—at two Los Angeles museum spaces.

George Templeton Strong’s diaries provide the North’s best record of daily passions and woes during its struggle against the South.

Popular resistance to the Fugitive Slave Law and “Slave Power” helped forge a new electoral force.

A look at how the Fourteenth Amendment supports birthright citizenship and challenges efforts to limit it using “allegiance” or immigration status.

The school’s $100m project to examine its slave ownership in Antigua is mired in controversy as academics allege obstruction.

Texan fence cutters fought enclosures as ranchers begin to privatize land and the open range.

Americans used history to shape how Northerners and Southerners debated abolition, often weaponizing the past instead of learning from it.

Dorothy Day’s path to sainthood is marked by tension between her heroic service and her rejection of violence.

In his quest for racial equality, Martin Luther King Jr. never lost faith in America’s founding promise.

Across the country, impromptu speakers drew crowds and arrests alike, turning public oratory into a defining feature of civic life.

Why is a right-wing press reissuing century-old adolescent mystery novels?

In a new book, Elisa Tamarkin retraces her father’s work in Vietnam and untangles the relationship of American newspaper business to the American war machine.

The "The Camp of the Saints" and its American readers.

Has the U.S. put the final nails in the coffin of the 50-year-old prohibition?

After a brutal dog attack, a historian rethinks how to write about Lewis and Clark, focusing on lived pain, emotion, and the limits of understanding the past.

Mitt Romney’s legacy is a reminder of how governing used to work.

How centuries of efforts to deny refuge to persecuted people paved way for authoritarianism.

Jesse Jackson’s campaigns replaced mass organizing with brokerage politics and accelerated the Democratic left’s neoliberal turn.

How the concept of culture wars rooted in the social and political struggles of nineteenth century Germany.

In 1920s Rhode Island, the Ku Klux Klan expanded rapidly—embedding itself in communities and attempting to seize control of the state militia.

A visual history.

Religion in the U.S. the was formed through the violent structures of settler rule, Indigenous displacement, and the remaking of sovereignty, land, and belief.

US shifts on propaganda efforts show a cycle of dismantling and revival, as tech-driven “information states” blur lines between influence, control, and freedom.

On the intersection of labor contract, nationalism, and white supremacy within Disney Studios.

A sharp critique of nursing institutions’ inaction, highlighting activist nurses who push for justice and expose gaps between words and action.

Its construction nearly started a war, but its fall happened almost by accident.

Pamela Harriman was drawn to power itself, rather than what power could achieve.

In 1992, the tiny, unincorporated village of Naples, Idaho became the ground zero of a national movement of far-right, anti-government activists and agitators.

Two recent books take on the Bernie Goetz shooting—with differing results.

A new history of opioid addiction treatment.

Cesar Chavez's name is forever tainted following a recent, horrific report. Dallas should now move to strike Henry Wade's name from the juvenile justice center.

NYC’s Avenue of the Americas reflects New Deal–era unity. Día de las Américas revives that spirit, promoting solidarity, self-determination, and equality.

The labor organizer has been outed as a sex predator.

A republic endures when loyalty is to principles of democracy, not party.

It is easy to get disoriented in the grassy marshes, and in researching a place where written records are scarce.

It bears the mark of the writer’s life and his times.

Santa Maria ostracized Rev. Heist for speaking out for Japanese Americans. Today, his courage resonates anew.

Ed Simon goes back to when the past was the future.

A collection of matchbooks from Southern California maps a vanished mid-century commercial corridor, long displaced by fire and time.

Robert Sobel reimagines the American Revolution.

The 1960s saw a stampede of lefty folk musicians, but none as politically engaged as Phil Ochs.

The rise of police unions, from a backlash against law enforcement professionalization to a political force in the carceral state.

How the president turns everything into idol worship.

Lucy Worsley’s PBS series highlights the emotional fallout of the conflict, with a focus on the British perspective.

The outrageous assault on birthright citizenship should prompt us to reflect on the fragility of democratic progress - and our own responsibility to defend it.

A new collection of Murray Kempton’s reporting demonstrates how good writing encourages America to do better as a country.

It turns out he’s still alive, and still teaching at Fordham Law. We had some questions about an amendment that wasn’t written to meet a moment like this.