Power

We are again caught between nationalists longing for an imagined past, and activists invoking ideals the nation has not attained.

A brief history of Puerto Rico's status and relationship to the United States.

Donald Trump combines the instincts of a reality-TV star with the politics of a hundred-and-seventy-year-old nativist movement.

President Obama espouses a facile faith in history bending toward perfection and morality-against evidence and reason.

He called black people "an ignorant and inferior race," and it gets worse.

An analysis of the significance, unintended consequences, and implications ofthe 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act fifty years later.

A primary source set and teaching guide created by educators.

A primary source set and teaching guide created by educators.

160 years ago, a similarly fractured GOP took months to settle on a speaker.

American bureaucracy's long and useful history.

The Manhattan Project scientists tried to advocate for nuclear de-escalation-instead, they unwittingly abetted the Vietnam War.

U.S. Census classifications through the centuries reflect broad changes in the way Americans understand race and ethnicity.

During Reconstruction, elites used racist appeals to silence calls for redistribution and worker empowerment.

Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump may prove that having once been a Democrat is an asset for a Republican presidential nominee for president

Forty years ago, the Senate supported school busing—until a 32-year-old changed his mind.

Woodrow Wilson arrived at the White House determined to eliminate the gains African-Americans made during Reconstruction.

315 years. 20,528 voyages. Millions of lives.

A primary source set and teaching guide created by educators.

Arabness, Blackness, and the figure of terror.

It was motivated in part by white Southerners' concerns about taxes, but ended up being all about maintaining their political power.

Meet Boston Corbett, the self-castrated hatmaker who was John Wilkes Booth's Jack Ruby.

A graphic retelling of Robert E. Lee surrender at Appomattox Court House.

Inside a famous Cold War deception.

A detailed look at when and where the U.S. Army was able to enforce the new rule of law in the years following the Civil War.

Futuristic control rooms with endless screens of blinking data are proliferating in cities across the globe. Welcome to the age of Dashboard Governance.

The Texan newspaperman who was born into slavery and helped shape the history of civil rights.

A visualization of who came from where, when.

The passage of Medicare and Medicaid, nearly fifty years ago, was no less contentious than recent debates about Obamacare.

The longest-running party in America has seen significant shifts in its ideological and geographic makeup.

The role of "big government" in American history.