President Bill Clinton signing NAFTA

The Long Shadow of NAFTA

Neither side of the border has seen the benefits it was promised.
Butter churn by a kitchen fireplace.

Mexican Freedom, American Slavery

Mexico's resistance to the institution of slavery made it a land ripe for African American immigration in the 1800s.
Woodrow Wilson.

The Poltergeist of Woodrow Wilson

We still live with the consequences of the 28th president’s fuzzy thinking.
Jewish activists demanding ceasefire in Gaza.

When ‘Nice Jewish Boys and Girls’ in the US First Took up the Palestinian Cause

According to Geoffrey Levin’s ‘Our Palestine Question,’ divides over Israeli policy aren’t new – they existed before American Jews fully embraced Zionism.
Marlon Brando and other "A Flag Is Born" actors

How Broadway Helped the Zionist Revolt Against Britain

In the 1940s, the Irgun went to the heart of American culture to garner support for its campaign of violent insurrection.
Palestinian Arab women and children in Israel, 1949

American Jews Have Fought for Palestinian Rights Since Israel Was Born

My research shows that this tradition runs deep.
Two people hanging poster of a man looking for his family, holding a photo of himself as a child.

Searching for Guatemala’s Stolen Children

Journalist Rachel Nolan investigates tens of thousands of forced adoptions and the U.S. policy that enabled them.
A top hat with poppies and the words "Merchants of Addiction", and pictures of wealthy American opium smugglers.

The Blue-Blood Families That Made Fortunes in the Opium Trade

Long before the Sacklers appeared on the scene, families like the Astors and the Delanos cemented their upper-crust status through the global trade in opium.
A migrant child is lowered from a trailer in Jesus Carranza, in the Mexican state of Veracruz, in November 2021.

What Does the United States Owe Central America?

A new work of nonfiction revives a history that some would sooner see forgotten.
US National Security council meets in 1967

How LBJ Forged the US-Israel Alliance

The special relationship between the United States and Israel was cemented by the support offered by Lyndon B. Johnson throughout the sixties.
Refugees board an Air America plane in Da Nang, Vietnam, on Jan. 23, 1968.

Pensions for the “Deep State:” Republicans Push Benefits for the CIA’s Secret Vietnam-Era Airline

Marco Rubio and Glenn Grothman want to recognize the contribution of Air America, the CIA airline that supported secret wars in Laos and Cambodia.
U.S. Ambassador Daniel Moynihan discusses violence in the Middle East at the U.N. Security Council
partner

Changing Views on Israel Isolating the U.S. at the U.N.

Americans have been isolated at the U.N. on Israel for a half century — but that used to prompt fierce debate.
Files in Guatemala’s Historical Archive of the National Police. Photo by Luis Soto.

In the Best Interest of the Child

A new book gets inside Guatemala’s international adoption industry and the complicated context of deciding a child’s welfare.
Painting of the Mexican railway

On the Shared Histories of Reconstruction in the Americas

In the 19th century, civil wars tore apart the US, Mexico and Argentina. Then came democracy’s fight against reaction.
A photo collage of African American activists.

Black Activists Began Traveling to Palestine in the 1960s. They Never Stopped.

“This isn’t about being for one group or against another. It’s about basic human rights.”
"The Book of Jewish Food" by Claudia Roden.

The Desk Dispatch: Layla Schlack on What Jewish Food Means to Her

"Frustratingly, Talmudically, Jewish food is simply what Jews eat," she writes.
A parade in Rio de Janeiro consisting of Brazilian Expeditionary Force soldiers and American 10th Mountain Division soldiers.

Skis, Samba, and Smoking Snakes: An Unlikely World War II Partnership

What happened when glacier-goggled American ski troops and samba-loving Brazilian soldiers fought side-by-side halfway across the world?
Jean-Jacques Dessalines

The U.S. Has Never Forgiven Haiti

What 220 years of Haitian independence means for how we tell the story of abolition and the development of human rights around the world.
Cuban refugee children.

When the U.S. Welcomed the ‘Pedro Pan’ Migrants of Cuba

Cold War America resettled unaccompanied minors as an anti-communist imperative. Today, the nation forgets this history.
A baby awaiting adoption near Guatemala City.

Guatemala’s Baby Brokers: How Thousands of Children Were Stolen For Adoption

Baby brokers often tricked Indigenous Mayan women into giving up newborns; kidnappers took others. International adoption is now seen as a cover for war crimes.
Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat shake hands at the White House

A Brief History of Peace Talks, Israel & the Palestinians

Who's to blame for failures in 2000, 2001 & 2008?
A faux Brazilian village constructed for Henry II and Catherine de’ Medici on the banks of the Seine in Rouen, France, and inhabited by fifty Tupinambá people who were forcibly brought there from Brazil, 1550.

The Discovery of Europe

A new book investigates the indigenous Americans who were brought to or traveled to Europe in the 1500s—a story central to the beginning of globalization.
Illustration of Joe Biden and Benjamin Netanyahu.

How Joe Biden Became America's Top Israel Hawk

The president once said “Israel could get into a fistfight with this country and we’d still defend” it. That is now clearer than ever.
Sera Koulabdara and four members of a Laos demining team scanning the ground in grassy area.

Fifty Years of Living with America’s Unexploded Bombs

Laos was collateral damage in the U.S.' secret war. The wounds are visible in the land and in generations still waiting on justice.
Lagoon in Majuro Atoll with tropical trees in the background and a rainbow in the sky

On the Map

The flag of Bikini Atoll looks a lot like the American flag. It has the same red and white stripes. The resemblance is intentional.
An electrified barbed-wire fence around Fort Bliss in El Paso, Tex., near the Mexican border, in 1915 or 1916.

The Long, Ugly History of Barbed Wire at the U.S.-Mexico Border

The first barbed wire border fences were proposed to keep out Chinese migrants. They’ve been debated for over a century.
Joel Roberts Poinsett (left). The poinsettia, which takes its name from Poinsett (right).

Poinsettia Day, the Monroe Doctrine, and U.S.-Mexican Relations

The troubled history of the famous poinsettia plant.
Japanese prime minister and minister of war Hideki Tojo on trial in 1947.

Japan’s Incomplete Reckoning With World War II Crimes

Gary Bass’s new book asks why the tribunal in Tokyo after World War II was so ineffective.
Liberian workers at the Firestone Plantation carrying buckets of latex in buckets on their shoulders.

The Human Price of American Rubber

Segregated lives of pride and peril on Firestone's Liberian plantations.
A collage of Meir Kahane, a pistol, and the outline of Israel and Palestine on a yellow background.

The American Origins of Israel’s Armament Campaign

How Kahanism infiltrated the political mainstream.