Excerpts

Histories of the epidemic tend to focus on coastal cities, but the response was very different in the middle of the country.

Marty Reisman, a brilliant, hustling ping-pong showman, rose from NYC clubs to global fame, clashed with officials, defied the sponge era, and left a legend.

In 1990, one of the great forgotten acts of American subterfuge unfolded. It involved Pizza Hut.

The Thanksgiving meal we consider traditional would have likely disgusted the Pilgrims. What would early Americans have eaten?

On the rise of the modern box store as a rebellion against the carefully controlled world of the department store.

Rambunctious and often offensive, R. Crumb draws freely on pre-existing racial and gender stereotypes.

What does it mean to be a liberal in America—and why has that label inspired both devotion and disdain?

Neoliberals long preached that markets and technology reinforce each other. In reality, when one develops, the other tends to stagnate.

William James’s ‘moral equivalent of war’ a hundred years later.

The survival of slave trading during the Civil War suggests that enslaved people remained valuable commodities in a time of economic upheaval.

In 1975, Australia’s PM Whitlam was dismissed by Governor-General Kerr in a US-influenced, Cold War–era soft coup.

How an Irish immigrant’s 1838 ballot in Illinois sparked a court battle over voting rights for non-citizens.

Google grew from a Stanford project into a $3T tech giant, pioneering search, data scaling, and AI, now challenged by regulation and chatbots.

On the enduring influence of one of the genre's most iconic drum riffs.

A new myth appeared during the presidential campaign of Andrew Jackson.

What we lose when casual nudity disappears.

How the history of the anti-mask and anti-vaccination movements hang together.

In the 1970s, the National Science Foundation tried to shake up the Cold War research model.

By 1943, the Girl Scouts had a presence in every Japanese American internment camp.

What happened after West Texas State College desegregated its football team in the 1960s.

What makes a house feel haunted and why do people keep telling these stories?

Restoring stability to American politics will require reviving an age-old concept: common ground.

The story of author L. Frank Baum’s very successful career creating other fantasy lands—department store windows.

The early-20th-century socialist and New York mayoral candidate Morris Hillquit saw liberalism and democracy as a foundation for a transition to socialism.

A writer looks back at the book that shaped her understanding of girlhood, body, and shame.

The fantastical roots of “scientific racism.”

What led Peter Matthiessen from spying to starting a magazine?

The most consequential shift that year was not one of battle lines but of ideology.

Amid plans to mark the nation’s semiquincentennial, many are asking whether or not the people really do rule, and whether the law is still king.

Fifty years ago today, Angola gained its independence from Portuguese domination. But the US was already working hard to snuff out the hopes of liberation.

The discovery of DNA was evidence of how deeply interconnected humans are, but the late scientist saw only difference.

Habeas corpus, the right to challenge unlawful detention, is at the center of a debate over presidential power.

Why is the essential promise of technology and the alleviation of drudgery not enough?

The country is losing neighbourhood orchards—and a connection to its origins.

How the U.S. Post Office took point on civil defense.

How the legacy of architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright are disappearing in our modern era.

These proposals sought to change the United States’ name, abolish the presidency, and set a limit on personal fortunes, among other measures.

Leo Frank’s trial, death sentence, eventual commutation, and finally his lynching all show the nation’s problematic history with anti-Semitism.

Looking back, and ahead, on the anniversary of a White House warning.

The transnational nature of America's fight for independence.

The story of the Armed Services Editions.

Washington has long been a disproportionately gay city—a mecca for clever, ambitious young men who want to escape their hometowns’ prying eyes.

Theodore Roosevelt was the first White House occupant to seek control over how newspapers covered him.

Municipal bonds have become an unavoidable part of local governance—and their costs divide rich towns from poor ones.

The rabid, apocalyptic Beat poetry that is "Mission with LeMay."

Over decades, and through harrowing experiences, my family held on to this bit of cloth as a reminder of everything they believed in—and were running toward.

A new history of New York City during World War II captures the glory, tawdriness, poverty, narcissism, beauty, and grime of this “aggregation of villages.”

It’s only in recent history that freedom has come to mean having a huge array of choices in life. Did we take a wrong turn?

The struggle over loyalty oaths reveals how Americans learned to wield faith and coercion in the name of freedom.

Springsteen’s 1982 classic has become an American scripture, its ghosts of fathers and highways still haunting today’s America.