Excerpts

Curated stories from around the web.
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A man in a suit with angel wings clipped to his back, tipping a hat with six different arms.

The Cult of the Entrepreneur

Why do Americans idealize people who found businesses?
Mottled photographs of immigrants set against the Statue of Liberty.

The American Dream 100 Years After the National Origins Act

How a clerk on Ellis Island at the dawn of the 20th century documented discrimination through photography, and what that tells us about today’s malaise.
A group of demonstrators at the Stonewall National Monument carrying transgender flags and signs.

No History Without the T

This is far more serious than the loss of a few letters.
Document stamped "classified."

Trump Breaks Washington’s Secrecy Addiction

The president is right to release the Kennedy files.
Gerald Ford signs Richard Nixon's pardon, superimposed over a smiling Nixon.

Blame Gerald Ford for Trump’s Unaccountability

In a new book, Jeffrey Toobin makes a convincing case that Ford’s pardon of President Nixon set the stage for unchecked presidential power.
Thomas Brackett Reed.

America First’s Forgotten Founder

There are better models for President Trump than William McKinley. 
Silhouettes of Energy Secretary Chris Wright, President Donald Trump, and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum in the Oval Office in the dark.

The Making of Emergencies

For centuries, theorists of liberal governance have worried about how emergencies can unfetter executive power. Trump has given those fears new urgency.
A painting of George Washington on horseback reviewing the Western Army at Fort Cumberland.
partner

Merry, Manly Militias

Levity and play — eerily combined with anxiety, terror, and deadly violence — shaped the identity and image of Early Republic militias.
A welder in protective gear works on a metal frame in an industrial setting.
partner

Trump's Punitive Approach to Drug Addiction is Nothing New

For a century, Americans have embraced a punitive approach to addiction—one that has undermined treatment efforts.

George Washington Cut Six Sentences From His Farewell Address. They’re Haunting Me Now.

“The conflicts of popular factions are the chief, if not the only inlets, of usurpation and Tyranny,” the first president wrote.
David Bowie singing into a microphone wearing a feather boa and tights.

How Pop Came Out of the Closet

Jon Savage’s “The Secret Public” traces the influence of queer artists on a hostile culture.
Kimonos hanging on a clothes line at an internment camp.

The Secret History

An investigation of the US’s mass internment of Japanese Americans.
A person carrying a table into a moving van.

Why American Mobility Ground to a Halt

Once a nation of movers, the US has lost its “culture of mobility,” a new book argues. That’s been a disaster for housing affordability and economic progress.
An illustration of space, with two silhouettes of heads overlapping.

The Fraught U.S.-Soviet Search for Alien Life

During the Cold War, American and Soviet scientists embarked on an unprecedented quest to contact extraterrestrials.
Charles J. Guiteau.

How Civil Service Protections Emerged After James Garfield’s Assassination

Reformers in the Republican Party had been calling for a professional, merit-based civil service since shortly after the Civil War.
Jimmy Carter and General Omar Torrijos shake hands after signing the Panama Canal Treaty in 1977

The Panama Canal Treaty Declassified

Kissinger warned: “This is no issue to face the world on. It looks like pure colonialism.”
Title page to Ida B. Wells's book about lynching.

Is It Legal?

Deferring to power and authority leads inevitably to autocracy.
Theodore Roosevelt

The Threat Behind Trump’s Praise of McKinley & Roosevelt

The president says he wants to be peacemaker—but his heroes were warmongers.
illustration of stack of books
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The Rise and Fall of Liberal Historiography

How historians changed their approach, from the 1960s to the present.
Martin Van Buren

The Prudence and Principles of Martin Van Buren

The eighth president defined the future of politics.
A propaganda poster of an American flag on fire and white American citizens struggling against Communist officials, with the caption: "Is this tomorrow? America under Communism!"

What Happened the Last Time a President Purged the Bureaucracy

The impact can linger not just for years but decades.
A view of an Inuit town in Greenland surrounded by snowy hills.

Greenland: Polar Politics

Though it may seem like a new topic of concern, the glaciated landscape of Greenland has floated in and out of American politics for decades.

Forget Lincoln or Reagan—Trump's Political Idol is a Mobbed-Up Brooklyn Boss

Donald Trump’s model of political leadership? The cigar-chomping, baseball-bat swinging Meade Esposito.
Drawings of King George III and George Washington.

Parallel Lives

King George and George Washington, featured in an upcoming exhibit.
Purse in the style of the American flag.

The Power of the Purse

The first time a president withheld funds for something approved by Congress, it led to the Impoundment Control Act. We’ll soon find out if that law has teeth.
Supreme Court sign proclaims "equal justice under law."

What Happens If Trump Defies the Courts

Do judges have the power to enforce their rulings if the executive branch refuses to comply?
Soldiers walking past a sign that says Fort Liberty.

Pete Hegseth Just Did the Funniest Thing Imaginable

It’s Fort Bragg again. So why are Confederate heritage groups so mad?
Painting imagining Washington shaking hands with Lincoln in front of liberty's flame.

Praising Washington in Lincoln’s Day

At the time of the Civil War, many Americans revered the nation’s Founding Fathers, and both supporters and opponents of slavery recruited them to their sides.
A drawing of two speakers resting on clouds and sending colorful soundwaves through the air.

Bluetooth Speakers Are Ruining Music

You have two ears for a reason.
A painting of Congress Hall and the New Theater in colonial Philadelphia.

The Mutiny of 1783

America’s only successful insurrection.
A drawing of a penny waving at a crowd.

Penny Dreadful

They’re horrid and useless. Why do pennies persist?
A moving truck on cinder blocks.

How Progressives Froze the American Dream

The U.S. was once the world’s most geographically mobile society. Now we’re stuck in place—and that’s a very big problem.
1860 political cartoon depicting Lincoln as a "Wide-Awake"
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A Posthumous Romance of White Male Reunion

The history of deriving political meaning from Abraham Lincoln’s sexuality.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

History Warns Us About Cabinet Members Like RFK Jr.

If RFK is confirmed, he is likely to fail for reasons similar to those for past political choices for the cabinet.
Photograph of Benito Mussolini

Gold and Brown

Libertarianism, fascism, and democracy.
Canadian and American flags.
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Using Tariffs to Try to Annex Canada Backfired in the 1890s

Instead of compelling Canada to become an American state, the 1890 McKinley Tariff drove Canada into British hands.
Man holding The New Yorker magazine like a telescope.

Onward and Upward

Harold Ross founded The New Yorker as a comic weekly. A hundred years later, we’re doubling down on our commitment to the much richer publication it became.
Carrie Baker and her book Abortion Pills: US History and Politics.

The Forgotten—and Incredibly Important—History of the Abortion Pill

Mifepristone took longer to get approved than most drugs—but not because it was unsafe.
Peale family portrait.

Domestic Tranquility: Privacy and the Household in Revolutionary America

British occupation brought challenges to the very foundation of the American home.
David Dobson with scientific equipment.

Nuclear Proliferation and the “Nth Country Experiment”

A mid-1960s “do-it-yourself” project produced “credible nuclear weapon” design from open sources.
A hammer is shown breaking several chunks of the earth into smaller pieces. In the background, black space.

The Wonderful Death of a State

For market radicals and neo-Confederates, secession is the path to a world that’s socially divided but economically integrated—separate but global.
American Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb, Hartford, Connecticut.

What Was Psychiatric Deinstitutionalization?

An interview with sociologist and historian of psychiatry Andrew Scull about the history and legacy of psychiatric deinstitutionalization.
The entrance of Fischer Bros, a Jewish grocery store, with a line of people going out the door.

The Rise of the Jewish Grocer

From kosher butchers, fruit peddlers, and herring dealers on the Lower East Side to supermarket innovators across the country
Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling, American Imperialist

What the author of "If—" learned about empire from the United States
Map of lynchings in Virginia

Racial Terror: Lynching in Virginia

An ongoing research project telling the stories of all the known lynching victims who were killed in Virginia between 1866 and 1932.
Exhibit title card featuring a mural of Elizabeth Cotten.

Lady Plays the Blues Project

A digital annotated bibliography and multimedia archive about Black women country blues guitarists.
Sound waves.

Listening Devices

The veterans of Kagnew Station saw the early growth of the surveillance state. Has the passage of time given them a new understanding of their work?
An illustration of boats in the water.

Capitalism, Slavery, and Economic White Supremacy

On the racial wealth gap.
Drawing of people picking cotton at a plantation

A Few Random Thoughts on Capitalism and Slavery

Historian James Oakes offers a critique of the New History of Capitalism.
Sheet music for W.C. Handy’s St. Louis Blues, 1925, featuring blue and white images of Louis Armstrong.

Imani Perry’s Blue Notes

Her new book tells the story of Black people through an exploration of the color blue.
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