Excerpts

"The older I got, the more I realized that our acceptance was . . . fragile, conditional. The signs were small but telling.”

Cy Endfield, film noir, and the blacklist.

A biography of Ghanaian leader Kwame Nkrumah casts the post-WWII era as a Black liberation epic rather than a psychodrama between Moscow and Washington.

From the 1994 Crime Act to Trump 2.0.

The ’80s I thought I remembered now feel very different to me.

When Bruce Lee met Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, he was still known as Lew Alcindor, the most hyped young basketball star in history.

The site’s volunteers face threats from Trump, billionaires, and AI.

Journalist Rebecca Grant shifts the abortion conversation away from laws and morals to focus on access: getting people the care they seek.

How pastors’ wives use power and submission.

The story of the woman who inspired Janis Joplin’s signature song, then slipped away.

The Trump administration has stepped up its antagonism of America’s treasured museums.

Recent news coverage has called the Privacy Act of 1974 “Watergate-inspired,” but such framing misses the big picture.

Academic freedom from the Middle Ages to apartheid South Africa to now.

An exhibit at the Jewish Museum reveals an artist for his time — and ours.

At a time when allegations of antisemitism are rampant and often incoherent, historian Mark Mazower offers a helpfully lucid history of the term.

Even when it was considered socially unacceptable, American women were knocking down pins on the local lanes.

To understand Congress’s abdication, look at the history of presidential selection.

Proposed as a compromise to ensure the ratification of the new US Constitution, the Bill of Rights has become a critical protector of civil liberties.

This important but little-known chapter of Black-Jewish history in the United States is worth remembering.

According to John Cassidy’s century-spanning history "Capitalism and Its Critics," the system lives on because of its antagonists.

The New Deal didn’t solve the economic problems behind the Great Depression—it made them worse.

The 1983 invasion of Grenada raised questions about the legitimacy of American reactions to a communist presence on the island.

Pregnant and facing decades in prison, the mother of Tupac Shakur fought for her life — and triumphed — in the trial of the Panther 21.

Why has a relatively conventional history of the War of Independence drawn such an outraged response?

Historian Richard White on the greed, ineptitude and economic cost behind the transcontinental railroads, and the implications for infrastructure policy today.

Today’s “medical freedom” warriors are drawing on a centuries-old American tradition.

How Samuel Francis wrote the recipe for MAGA.

Risky loans, regulatory gaps, and Wall Street practices fueled the 2008 financial crisis and led to the Great Recession.

Louisiana’s 1845 and 1852 conventions reveal partisan tensions over the economy that shaped Black struggles and opportunities for decades.

As the last Holocaust survivors approach the end of their lives, an AI scholar grapples with technology that promises to freeze them in time.

Where Western men’s clothing traditions came from, how they have evolved, and how they're being continually reinterpreted.

The Right's habit of defiance.

And the end of civilisation.

Amid bluster about warfighting and lethality, it is important to recall the moral burdens of war.

There are echoes in our political rhetoric of the men who helped talk the United States into civil war.

How a term coined to describe a nineteenth-century politics of exclusion would become a diagnosis, a political cudgel, and a rallying cry.

How the Democrats have alienated a growing number working-class voters.

Joseph Smith, religious innovator.

On his films and the way they provocatively confronted the evils of the times in which they were made.

Trump allies push “invasion” claims to justify suspending habeas corpus, a far-right legal effort years in the making.

LA’s fires and a century of landscape manipulation.

A translation renaissance in US publishing just ended. And you probably missed it.

The economic vision of American industrialist Andrew Mellon loomed large over the boom and bust of the 1920s.

Clothing labels have often played a political role in the fight for the rights of garment workers.

Trump’s brand of authoritarianism emerges out of New York City’s real estate industry. As mayor, Zohran Mamdani vows to curb that sector’s outsized power.

Revisiting the lessons of Allan Bérubé’s 1990 history of queer solders during World War II.

In the mid-19th century, governments on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border set out to recast North America’s political landscape.

The pair’s new book recovers the sound of early Black music.

What New York City can learn from its past about the potential for urban growth that is not hostage to the preferences of the largest private owners.

Media focus on Charlie Kirk's presentation style while downplaying what he said and did is reminiscent of 1950s strategies for legitimizing Jim Crow.