Outline of Henry Kissinger with his face made of skulls.

Blood on His Hands

Survivors of Kissinger's secret war in Cambodia reveal unreported mass killings.
Harry Truman, left, holds a copy of the Torah presented to him by Israeli leader Chaim Weizmann in May 1948.

How A U.S. President Known to Disparage Jews Became Godfather of Israel

Harry Truman used antisemitic slurs in private. But his surprise decision 75 years ago to recognize Israel, launching a fierce alliance, was a long time coming.
George w. Bush delivers a speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln under a banner reading "Mission Accomplished."

The Worst Crime of the 21st Century

The United States’ destruction of Iraq remains the worst international crime of our time. Its perpetrators remain free and its horrors are buried.
Migrants in line for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, barbed wire in the foreground.
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Biden’s Border Policies Target Haitians. That’s No Accident.

The long history undergirding our harsh bipartisan migration policies.
W. E. B. Du Bois, 1958

Another Side of W.E.B. Du Bois

A conversation on Du Bois' perspective on empire and democracy, the development of his anti-imperial thought, and his vision for transnational solidarity.
Collage of Paul Bremer, a line of prisoners, and an excerpt of a document.

Orders of Disorder

Who disbanded Iraq’s army and de-Baathified its bureaucracy?
The cover of the United Nations FAO-Unesco Soil Map of the World, 1974.

The Earth for Man

Redistributing land was once central to global development efforts—and it should be today.
Abandoned building at the foot of hills in Dongducheon, South Korea.

A Brutal Sex Trade Built for American Soldiers

It’s a long-buried part of South Korean history: women compelled by force, trickery or desperation into prostitution, with the complicity of their own leaders.
Final Attack on Arequipa on March 7, 1858. Painting in the Sala Castilla, Museo Nacional de Historia, Lima.

The Many South Carolinas in the Americas

Conflict over centralization, political power, and national identity were not unique occurrences in the Americas during the middle decades of the 19th century.
Soldiers of the 9th Infantry Division disembark from a helicopter during the Division's withdrawal from Vietnam.

The Many Ends of the Vietnam War

When do wars end, and who gets to decide? These deceptively simple questions are actually quite difficult to answer.
Matthew Henson Henson in a fur coat with a hood pulled over his head.

Matthew Henson: The US' Unsung Black Explorer

While other explorers may claim credit for discovering the North Pole, an unsung and largely forgotten former sharecropper has as good a case as anyone.

The Liberal Discontents of Francis Fukuyama

“The End of History?” was an announcement of victory. But a quarter-century later, its author remains unsure if liberalism truly won.
Collage of Putin, Khruschev, a missile, and a fighter jet.

Blundering on the Brink

The secret history and unlearned lessons of the Cuban missile crisis.
Nicholas Said.

The Epic Life of Nicholas Said, from Africa to Russia to the Civil War

Dean Calbreath’s biography, “The Sergeant,” relates the improbable adventures of a brilliant 19th-century Black man.
A roll of cotton thread in the shape of an eye.

Slavery and the Guardian: The Ties That Bind Us

There is an illusion at the centre of British history that conceals the role of slavery in building the nation. Here’s how I fell for it.
Montage of photographs from Operation Desert Storm.

How to Kill a Country

The 2003 invasion of Iraq was no turning point. It was a slow-burning tale of how Britain and the US armed a nation, and then betrayed it.
18th-century map of Madagascar by Jacques-Nicolas Bellin.

The Hidden Treasures of Pirate Democracy

In his final book, David Graeber looks at an experiment in radical democracy and piratical justice in Madagascar.
Composite by Hannah Yoest of images relating to the Iraq War.

Moral Injuries

Remembering what the Iraq War was like, 20 years later.
A Metropolitan Museum official hands over a 13th-century wooden strut to Nepal’s archaeology department last year. Photograph: Aryan Dhimal/Zuma Press Wire/Rex/Shutterstock.

New York’s Met Museum Sees Reputation Erode Over Collection Practices

An investigation identified hundreds of artifacts linked to indicted or convicted traffickers. What does this mean for the future of museums?
Vietnam solider exhibit at the Nixon Library.

The Nixon Library's Vietnam Exhibition Obscures the Truth About the War's End

The Nixon White House Tapes tell a different story.

Iraq and the Pathologies of Primacy

The flawed logic that produced the war is alive and well.
Postcard of Sarajevo.

Collapsing Pluralism: The Bosnian War Three Decades Later

The US is not Yugoslavia, but its struggles surrounding pluralism, nationalism, and an urban/rural divide parallel those Yugoslavia faced as it descended into chaos.
Ricardo and Enrique Flores Magón at the Los Angeles County Jail, circa 1916.

An American Story

Kelly Lytle Hernández’s new book chronicles the tumultuous period leading up to the Mexican Revolution, casting the border as ground zero for continental change.
President Jimmy Carter standing behind a podium.

Jimmy Carter's African Legacy: Peacemaker, Negotiator and Defender of Rights

Carter’s work in Zimbabwe forms a significant and underappreciated part of his legacy.
Eilhu Root.

The Shameful Imperialist Legacy of Elihu Root, Godfather of Corporate Law

How a celebrated corporate lawyer named Elihu Root became the driving force behind some of the worst U.S. atrocities ever perpetrated abroad.
A Foxconn factory in San Jeronimo, Chihuahua state, Mexico, as seen from Santa Teresa, N.M.
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History Shows Moving Manufacturing to North America Isn’t a Cure-all

The initial promise of Mexican factories in the 1960s gave way to impoverished communities and capital flight in search of higher profits.
Painting of a city along a river, with a long dock and commerical ships

James Buchanan's 1832 Mission to the Tsar

The plight of Poland and the limits of America's revolutionary legacy in Jacksonian foreign policy.
3 of the Tanesar goddesses placed in a wooden crate lined with police tape.

The Goddess Complex

A set of revered stone deities stolen from a temple in northwestern India can tell us much about our current reckoning with antiquities trafficking.
A U.S. Army officer posing after a battle at the Baghdad airport, April 2003.

Blundering Into Baghdad

The right—and wrong—lessons of the Iraq War.
President John F. Kennedy meets with William Fitzjohn, Sierra Leone's charge d’affairs in Washington, in the Oval Office on April 27, 1961.

The African Diplomats Who Protested Segregation in the U.S.

Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy publicly apologized after restaurants refused to serve Black representatives of newly independent nations.