Power

Lyndon B. Johnson's visionary set of legislation turns 50 years old.

George Kennan's diaries reveal just how much he hated America.

Why Washington needs more honest graft.

Who were Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Lincoln, and the rest of the first 16 US presidents, what did they do, and what do they hope history has forgotten?

Dorothea Dix and Franklin Pierce were in many ways ideological soulmates, but he would not help her effort to improve conditions for the mentally ill.

How Stanley Kubrick’s film “Dr. Strangelove” exposed dangers inherent in nuclear command-and-control systems.

Three years ago, a Supreme Court case, the U.S. Census, and anti-Obama backlash set the course for the assault on women's fundamental freedoms.

In 1979, Carter's "malaise speech," shaped by sociological insights, sought national unity but clashed with Reagan's appeal to individualism.

Our horror of chemical agents is one of the great success stories of modern diplomacy.

US intelligence agencies seem to have adopted Orwell’s idea of doublethink—“to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies.”

In the era of the voting wars, the right to vote is itself a subject of continued partisan, regional, and racial conflict.

What has gone wrong with the modern environmental movement and its political organizing.

An hour of stories about a few high-stakes inaugurations from the past.

One of the great pieces of unfinished business for the Democratic Party.

The dramatic story of the abolitionist mail crisis of 1835.

Ulysses S. Grant was overlooked by historians and underestimated by contemporaries. H.W. Brands reevaluates Grant’s presidency.

A review of a handful of new books that embody the new liberal originalism.

Do successful presidents make sound knife-wielders?

A case of 18th-century politicking has stymied our ability to deal with a 21st-century crisis.

Fisher Ames’s philosophy can be summed up as follows: the “power of the people, if uncontroverted, is licentious and mobbish.”

Why do politicians reverse their positions?

Political funerals and the tour of Henry Clay's corpse.

Lyndon Johnson and the events in Dallas.

The redistricting revolution, fifty years later.

After the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln faced the issue of sorting out a nation divided over the issue of freed slaves. But what were his views on it?

What's next for Planned Parenthood?

What gun regulations meant to the founders, and why the Black Panthers are the true pioneers of today's pro-gun movement.

Grover Cleveland believed that if anything happened to his mustache during his surgery at sea, the public would know something was wrong.

To mark the culmination of Census 2010, we explore the fascinating story of how Americans have counted themselves.

Nine maps of the transatlantic slave trade between 1500 and 1900.