Michael Kazin

A new history examines the lost promise and fierce persecution of the IWW.

A look at socialism’s far-reaching influence on American thought.

The FBI’s first director built the agency around some of his own worst instincts.

What connection does the party of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson have to the party of Barack Obama and Kamala Harris?

On the pro-business transformation of the Democratic Party.

Historians have demonstrated how central racism has been to the formation of the U.S. But many of those same ideas have also been vital to combating white supremacy.

Do we give the activist groups of the 1960s more credit than they deserve?

A new history charts the forgotten ways the social politics of the Roosevelt years transformed the United States.

The first volume of Frederik Logevall’s biography of JFK reveals the scope of his ambition and the weakness of his political commitments.

The rioters at the Capitol are part of an unbroken American tradition. Sweet talk about our “better angels” did not defeat them before and will not now.

The system that is nobody’s first choice.

Eric Foner has helped us better understand the ambiguous consequences of what were almost always only partial victories.

How the region switched from being the stronghold of one party to the base of its adversary.

Hubert Humphrey and the unmaking of Cold War liberalism.

The trials of Jimmy Carter.

A conversation on party politics and the durability of our current political system.

Jacksonian democracy may have been liberating for some, but it was repressive for many others.

Presidents who win the electoral college but lose the popular vote never really recover.

The United States wasn't filled with isolationists, and it wasn't exactly neutral before 1917.

The Popular Front and American culture.

"A People’s History" is bad history, albeit gilded with virtuous intentions.