Alexis de Tocqueville

The Interstate Highway System created a national polity defined by circulation. To rethink the Interstates is to rethink the United States.

Henry Charles Carey is arguably the most influential economist in American history.

The history of enslaved firefighters offers a cautionary tale about the dangers of relying on involuntary labor to fight blazes.

A liberalism that divides humanity into a master class and a slave class deserves an asterisk as “white liberalism.”

The surprising influence of premillennial eschatology on American culture.

An excess of restrictions has taken a very real toll on the lives of everyday Americans. Their stories must be told.

On the fragile facade of republicanism in 19th century America.

On Samuel Moyn's Cold War liberalism.

The American foreign policy sage was driven as much by pessimism about the US as antipathy to the Soviet Union.

Jedediah Purdy's new book examines why the U.S. has continuously failed to qualify as a system defined by popular rule.

The author confronts the daunting task of writing about her childhood memory, both as a memoirist and a historian.

A new book chronicles the life of the 19th century political giant of Salmon Chase.

From origin stories to blood-purity statutes, we have long enlisted genealogy to serve our own purposes.

In "A Nation of Descendants," Francesca Morgan traces the American use and abuse of genealogy from the Daughters of the American Revolution to Roots.

David Halberstam’s title The Best and the Brightest was steeped in irony. Did these presidential advisers earn it?

The question of how to balance state and national power was perhaps the single most important and most challenging question confronting the early republic.

The fight over the American Jobs Plan reflects a long history of competing visions of public works—and, most of all, who should benefit from rebuilding.

How the late 19th century’s raucous party system gave way to a sedate and exclusionary political culture that erected more and more barriers to participation.

We say we’re for it. We’ve never truly had it. These next few years will determine its fate.

On the social and political function of political media.