Identity

"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?

Across the ideological spectrum, it’s become a bedrock value. What does it mean?

The early years of a future basketball icon.

Why does the influential African-American organizer and strategist continue to speak to us, three and a half decades after his death?

Why black biography matters.

Enigmatic, bigoted, prominent figure of the Confederacy—and one of the highest-ranking Jew in the history of American government. What do we do with him now?

Looking to Louisa May Alcott's heroine for inspiration.

What accounts for white tribalism?

On 400 years of tribalism, genocide, expulsion, and imprisonment.

You are not Gen X. You are not a Millennial. Unless you are a Baby Boomer, you are nothing.

One man’s struggle to pick a side of the war, his ultimate choice, and how powerful the of concepts “liberty and union” were in motivating Northern soldiers.

On the private and public lives of the author of “The Fire Next Time” and “Giovanni’s Room.”