1865 map of North Carolina & South Carolina
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Gone to Carolina

Ed Ayers heads south in search of stories from two centuries ago. Traces are there, but larger meanings remain elusive.
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History on the Road

After decades of reading, writing, and teaching about the American past, Ed Ayers sets out to see how that past is remembered in the places where it happened.
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American Journey

A journal of my road trip to the formative decades of American history.
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Best History Writing of 2021

Bunk's American History Top 40.
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The World According to the 1580s

A newly digitized map offers a rare glimpse at the way Europeans conceived of the Americas before British colonization.
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How America Thought About Refugees 70 Years Ago

And other gleanings from the 1949 run of the Saturday Evening Post.
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The Drunkard’s Progress

Two hundred years ago, it was hard for Americans to miss the message that they had a serious drinking problem.
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Legends and Lore

A roadside marker program in New York State embraces the gray area between official history and local lore.
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Mum’s the Word

In the height of the Cold War, the NSA created a series of posters to keep its secrets from leaking. They're both wonderful and creepy.
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Zones of Doubt

What we can learn about trade policy from a misbegotten 19th century effort to quantify the chemical properties of wool.
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Podcasting the Past

Why historians should stop worrying and embrace the rise of history podcasts by non-scholars.
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What the Viral Media of the Civil War Era Can Teach Us About Prejudice

A recent photography exhibit at the Getty Center raises difficult questions about our capacity for empathy.
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Resurrection City, 2.0

A generation ago, historians dismissed the Poor People’s Campaign of 1968. On the eve of a reboot, we can see it in a different light.
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The Greatest American Historian You've Never Heard Of

An appreciation of Alfred Crosby, who coined the term "Columbian exchange."
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Infrastructure is Good for Business

During the Depression, business leaders knew that public works funding was key to economic growth. Why have we forgotten that lesson?
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How We Learned to Love the Bill the Rights

A new book argues that the fetishization of the first ten amendments is a recent thing – and that it comes at a cost.
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At Home With Ursula Le Guin

Her novels featured dragons and wizards, but they were also deeply grounded in indigenous American ways of thought.
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Encountering the Plantation Myth Where You'd Least Expect It

Well off Savannah's tourist trail, there's a replica of an antebellum plantation home in the middle of a public housing project.
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Paying for Climate Change

Despite his extreme rhetoric, Trump is merely the latest in a long line of U.S. leaders unwilling to pony up for global environmental accords.
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The Sugar Tramp

One man’s obsession with the ephemera of his industry.
A prison cell with a television tuned to election coverage.
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Why Felon Disenfranchisement Doesn't Violate the Constitution

The justification can be found in an obscure section of the Fourteenth Amendment.
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Snails, Hedgehog Heads and Stale Beer

A peek inside premodern cookbooks.
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The Future of our Confederate Monuments Rests With the Kids

The perspectives of older Americans have dominated the debate. It's time we pay more attention to what younger people have to say.
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The Other End of the Telescope

Considering astronomy's history from the shadow of the Arecibo Observatory reveals the discipline's intimate ties to imperialism.
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Law & Order, Philadelphia Style

The city that just elected a civil rights lawyer as D.A. is the same city presided over for years by "Mayor Cop" Frank Rizzo.
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The Supply-Side Swindle

For decades, the GOP has used tax cuts to achieve its political goals. So why do Dems keep treating "supply-side" as an economic strategy?
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A World in a Box

Harvard digitizes two centuries of colonial history.
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"What is Sport to You is Death to Us."

In 1867, African-Americans in Virginia stood up for their new political rights in the face of threats from their white neighbors.
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America @ Worship

How social media is – and isn't – changing American religion.
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The Problem with "Reagan Democrats"

Does the trope obscure more than it illuminates about the 2016 election?