Buildings at the University of Minnesota.

The Book That Explained the University To Itself

Laurence Veysey’s 1965 tome remains the most incisive portrait of higher education.
Slave auction in the United States.

How a Group of 19th-Century Historians Helped Relativize the Violent Legacy of Slavery

On the scholarship and intellectual legacies of Ulrich Bonnell Phillips, William Dunning and other academics.
Shackles with a magnifying glass on the end.

How the Study of Slavery Has Shaped the Academy

Who decides how history gets written?
Black men stand on trains derailed by Sherman's destruction of infrastructure.

The Other Side of Sherman’s March

The general’s campaign through the South is known for its brutality against civilians. For the enslaved who followed his army, though, it was a shot at freedom.
A painting of Roland G. Hazard.

The Hazards of Slavery

Scott Spillman reviews Seth Rockman’s “Plantation Goods: A Material History of American Slavery.”
Empty speech bubbles emanating from people in an old house.

Popular History

What role do we really want history to be playing in our public life? And is the history we have actually doing that work?

Charismatic Models

There is, and always has been, a vanishingly thin line between charismatic democratic rulers and charismatic authoritarians.

The Problem of Slavery

David Brion Davis’s philosophical history.