Identity

The author of a new biography talks about the conservative journalist’s life and legacy.

Whitman curated his image through photography, blending truth and artifice, but like today’s selfies, found more confusion than clarity.

The nation’s founding myth was based on faith and solidarity – but it also contained the roots of today’s democratic crisis.

Walt Whitman was a champion self-advertiser, maven of the brag and the humblebrag.

By assigning personal attributes to birth cohort, generationism tends to undermine personal responsibility.

My dad’s birth certificate said Vicente. His passport said Vince. New legislation would have disenfranchised him.

The great American writer witnessed the forging of his nation – but Ron Chernow’s portrait cannot see beyond its subject.

James Baldwin’s testimony in images.

The qualities that enabled Belle da Costa Greene to cross the color line also made her a formidable negotiator and collector for J.P. Morgan’s library.

Her ghostwritten autobiography diminishes her, and I found out why.

A new book highlights Josephine Baker’s wartime contribution, and how she used her fame to provide cover and promote equal rights.

Lesbian relationships among government workers were seen as a threat to national security in the 1950s. But what was a lesbian relationship?

An exploration of the contrast between the supreme confidence of Kennan's policy prescriptions and the perpetual turbulence of his inner life.

Shulamith Firestone and the burdens of prophecy.

Was the pro wrestler known as “the Cuban Wonder” really the first Black world champion?

The left case for an independent Canada.

Publishing needs his democratic spirit.

"The older I got, the more I realized that our acceptance was . . . fragile, conditional. The signs were small but telling.”

How did the U.S. government become involved in “adjudicating Indianness”?

Two new books explore the messy complexities of immigration—from the era of Lincoln to Irish New York.

“Mary Mallon was a cook. And her story, first and foremost, is the story of a cook.”

You can argue over whether Jimmy Carter was America’s greatest president, but he was undoubtedly one of the greatest Americans to ever become president.

Rouse reveals the hidden queer histories of suffragists like Alice Morgan Wright, who balanced activism with private, erased relationships.

Two new books make the case that “when and where you are Latino matters.”

The life of John Andrew Jackson — and the vacillating richness and scarcity of the archive.

The Civil War cut short many lives, and a new a book that blends the genres of history and memoir sets out the resurrect the memory of one of those lives.

On the transformation of Mary Harris into Mother Jones.

Transgender people's reactions to watching oral histories of the legacy of a 1966 riot in the Tenderloin that was nearly lost to history.

In search of the Underground Railroad’s legendary conductor.

Who was George Eyser, the one-legged German-American gymnast who astounded at the Olympic Games?