The unveiling of the Deak Monument, statue of Ferenc Deak, in Budapest 1887.

Transatlantic Perspective on Liberty

Rose Wilder Lane in the 1930s decried Europe's repressive government. Who's freer now?
Pete and Charlotte O'Neal at the United African Alliance Community Center (UAACC) in Tanzania.

The Black Panthers Who Never Came Home

Fifty-nine years after Huey Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panthers, Charlotte and Pete O’Neal remain in exile in Tanzania.
Student stands in front of tanks in Tiananmen Square
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Students’ Tiananmen Protest Turned Deadly, Transforming U.S.-China Relations

Students in Beijing rallied for free speech and democratic reforms in 1989. The crackdown that followed altered U.S.-China relations.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower meets with five national labor leaders.

American Labor’s Shameful History of Support for Zionism

The US labor movement has never been neutral: its union officialdom has a more-than-century-long history of allying with Zionism.
Brandenburg Gate

The Historical Precedents for Trump’s Gaza Plan

After two years of war and tens of thousands of casualties, Israel and Hamas have accepted a peace plan put forward by US President Donald Trump.
Donald Trump speaking to U.S. Navy sailors.

Trump: The US Lost Vietnam and Afghanistan Due to Woke

Trump thinks the US was constrained by “political correctness” in Vietnam and Afghanistan. But those wars were characterized by dehumanization and destruction.
A collage featuring Kwame Nkrumah, Martin Luther King Jr., and Africa.

What Pan-Africanism Can Teach Us Now

A biography of Ghanaian leader Kwame Nkrumah casts the post-WWII era as a Black liberation epic rather than a psychodrama between Moscow and Washington.
Demonstratoars protest Donald Trump’s comments about Canada becoming the 51st state of the United States, March 22, 2025.

Anti-Americanism in Canada Is Nothing New — It’s a Tradition

Trump’s tariffs/threats have sparked boycotts and motivated voters north of the border, but Canadians’ desire to distance themselves from the US has deep roots
Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier.

Fifty Years After History’s Most Brutal Boxing Match

The Thrilla in Manila nearly killed Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier.
Medical supplies for the front are piled up at a railway station in Ethiopia, in 1935.

This Black Educator Looked to Conflicts Abroad for Lessons on Fighting Racism at Home

The Second Italo-Ethiopian War and the Spanish Civil War offered Melva L. Price an opportunity to examine the links between racism and fascism.

Latin America, the United States, and the Creation of Social-Democratic Modernity

A Q&A with the author of "America, América: “A New History of the New World.”
Apple Company store in Chongqing, China.

How American Tech Made China an Economic Superpower

"Apple in China" tells the incredible story of China’s industrial development through the lens of America’s most iconic tech giant.
Henry Kissinger poses for a portrait in the Situation Room in the basement of the West Wing at the White House, Washington, DC, 1969. Photo © Wally McNamee/CORBIS/Getty Images.

The Parallel Lives of Cold War Frenemies

On new biographies of Zbigniew Brzezinski and Henry Kissinger.
Two matcha drinks.

Green Gruel? Pea Soup? What Westerners Thought of Matcha When They Tried It for the First Time

‘Matcha mania’ shows no signs of slowing, pushing supply chains to the brink. It’s marked quite the rise for a drink long met with skepticism in the West.
Art work of a hand holding Mars by string in the midst of the universe.

The Long History of Life on Mars

A new book explores how Americans came to believe in an advanced Martian civilization at the turn of the twentieth century.
General Douglas MacArthur and Emperor Hirohito at the US embassy in Tokyo in 1945.

After Hiroshima: The US Occupation of Japan

Following Japan’s unconditional surrender in September 1945, the US aimed to rebuild the nation in its own image – for better or worse.
Yitzhak Rabin and Yassir Arafat shaking hands while Bill Clinton holds his arms around them at the Oslo Accords.

How the Oslo Accords Fragmented Palestine and Uprooted a People

Revisiting a turning point in the history of Israel’s occupation.
John McCain stands in a crowd shaking hands in a Ukrainian city.

How Decades of Folly Led to War in Ukraine

For decades, US hostility towards Russia and continued NATO encroachment ever further into Eastern Europe have laid the groundwork for the current crisis.
Fulgencio Batista, Andrés Domingo, and Richard Nixon drinking together.

The CIA Trained Fulgencio Batista’s Torturers in Cuba

The Bureau for the Repression of Communist Activities, known for its blood-spattered record of torture and political killings, was backed by the CIA.
Shadowy outlines of people with military style rifles on a black background.

Pipe Hitters

American special operators brought their tactics in the global war on terror back home.
Spooking the Censors

Spooking the Censors

In the 1950s, the CIA funded efforts to smuggle great works of literature into the Eastern Bloc.
Photo-Illustration: WIRED Staff/Getty Images

The Rise of the US Military’s Clandestine Foreign War Apparatus

In the darkest days of the Iraq War, the highly secretive Joint Special Operations Command emerged as one of the most influential institutions in government.
Aerial view of the atomic bomb's destruction in Nagasaki.

The Poet Who Watched a Football Game on Nagasaki’s Atomic Killing Field

On William W. Watt’s experience in the aftermath of nuclear devastation.
An illustration of a man and a woman kissing behind a Navy ship sinking into the ocean.

Eight Decades On, Vanuatu Still Struggles With America’s World War II Legacy

Americans’ love affair with the South Pacific masks the US Navy’s devastating impact on the region’s people and environment.
A crowd of Iranian protesters burns photos.

The Islamic Republic Was Never Inevitable

With Iran’s theocracy under strain, a new history shows that its rise was mainly a stroke of bad luck.
Ruhollah Khomeini salutes fellow-revolutionaries at a rally in 1979.

The Iranian Revolution Almost Didn’t Happen

From a dying adviser to a clumsy editorial, the Revolution was a cascade of accidents and oversights.
Sarrasani Program 1931 with Lakota's on horses, elephants, (circus theme).

Performing the Exotic and Lakota Resistance

How Lakota performers challenged the 'exotic othering' of their identities in the Sarrasani circus.
John F. Kennedy meeting with Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, 1961.

The Way We Understand the Cold War Is Wrong

People tend to assume they know exactly what the Cold War was and when it ended. Anders Stephanson argues that this standard chronology doesn’t fit the facts.
World Trade Center towers burning on 9/11.

The Righteous Community: Legacies of the War on Terror

A new book traces how "the wet dream of an ageing militarist has become a fundamental force driving American foreign policy."
The nuclear bomb cloud over Hiroshima.

Inside the Days, Hours and Minutes Leading Up to the Hiroshima Bombing

On the preparation and aftershocks of the attack that marked the beginning of the Nuclear Age.