Power

Far from a relic of the past, September 11 continues to normalize previously unimaginable forms of state-sanctioned barbarity.

This armed uprising in 1794, over taxation by the fledgling new government, threatened to destroy the new union within six years of the Constitution’s ratification.

Two new books argue that the War on Terror changed American politics, but what if the sources of its violence were already long present in the country?

On the ways that people have conflated freedom with whiteness but pays too little attention to the force of freedom as a concept.

George Henry Thomas, southerner in blue.

The idealistic presidential candidate was on the verge of seizing control of the 1968 race just as Sirhan Sirhan’s bullet struck.

At the intersection of gender and racial discrimination, Black widows struggled to get the compensation they deserved.

An account of the long-lasting effects of nuclear energy in the US.

Frederick Douglass and Republican legislators had high hopes for Andrew Johnson—but ended up impeaching him.

For decades, “common sense” has been a convenient framing for conservative ideas. The label hides a more complicated picture.

Wilson became a great supporter of the 19th Amendment, but only because he worked alongside a woman who spoke his language.

But the evidence never backed it up before, and it doesn’t support such claims today either.

How a dark-money mogul bankrolled an astroturf backlash.

After 110 years, a look at the benefits — and drawbacks — to expanding the chamber.

On Pete Souza’s Obama.

Long before Trump, politicians on the country’s West Coast mobilized a white working-class base through violent hate of Chinese and Japanese immigrants.

Parallels between the American Revolution and the U.S. Capitol riot.

There have been at least eight provinces in British North America labeled the "fourteenth colony." They cannot all claim the same title.

Actions are more persuasive than words, and manipulating morale often dictates how commanders deploy their troops. Witness the American War of Independence.

On Akhil Reed Amar’s “The Words That Made Us,” a new history of America’s constitutional conversation.

How public interest groups inadvertently aided the right’s ascendency.

In a city of ambitious influencers, a shadow cabinet hopes it can summon a new New Deal.

Those who claim that vaccine resistance is an expression of liberty are historically illiterate.

Jefferson and his connection to partisanship in early America.

What do the two events really have in common?

How Hannah Arendt’s fans misread the post-truth presidency.

Even as the United States mobilized to defeat Nazi Germany, anti-democratic forces simmered at home.

How a book of essays from 1964 explains what happened at the Capitol.

Pulitzer-winning historian Annette Gordon-Reed reflects on the battle for the past and the fragile state of American democracy.

In the 19th century, freedom from government interference mapped onto opposition of women's rights.