Jill Lepore

A new television miniseries depicts the pursuit of Lincoln’s killer. But the public appetite for tales about the chase began even as it was happening.

100 years ago, Chief Justice William Howard Taft made the Court more efficient and more powerful, marking a turning point whose effects are still being felt.

A conversation with Jill Lepore about the past decade — “a time that felt like a time, felt like history.”

After the Civil War, Jefferson Davis, was to be tried for treason. Does the debacle hold lessons for the trials awaiting Donald Trump?

The investigative committee singles out Trump for his role in the attack. As prosecution, the report is thorough. But as historical explanation it’s a mess.

In New England, the birds were once hunted nearly to extinction; now they’re swarming the streets like they own the place. Sometimes turnabout is fowl play.

How our inability to change America’s most important document is deforming our politics and government.

The Court’s striking down of a New York gun law relies on a fundamentally anti-democratic historical record that excludes women and people of color.

Biking innovations brought riders freedom. But in a world built for cars, life behind handlebars is both charmed and dangerous.

There is little mention of abortion in a four-thousand-word document crafted by fifty-five men in 1787. This seems to be a surprise to Samuel Alito.

From evolution to anti-racism, parents and progressives have clashed for a century over who gets to tell our origin stories.

Efforts to rescue African American burial grounds and remains have exposed deep conflicts over inheritance and representation.

As a diagnosis, it’s too vague to be helpful—but its rise tells us a lot about the way we work.

Was this new age spurred by the ideals of the Enlightenment or by the imperatives of global warfare?

What began as a protest, rally, and march ended as something altogether different—a day of anarchy that challenges the terminology of history.

How the President could endanger the official records of one of the most consequential periods in American history.

The United States’ unofficial anthem, a hymn of love of country.

“Start-ups: they need philosophers, political theorists, historians, poets. Critics.”

When J.F.K. ran for President, a team of data scientists with powerful computers set out to model and manipulate American voters. Sound familiar?

Why did American policing get so big, so fast? The answer, mainly, is slavery.

How government commissions became alibis for inaction.

The deadly episode stood for a bitterly divided era. Did we ever leave it?

Until a century or so ago, almost no one lived alone; now many endure shutdowns and lockdowns on their own. How did modern life get so lonely?

In the literature of pestilence, the greatest threat isn’t the loss of human life but the loss of what makes us human.