Excerpts

On the integrated Union regiments composed of white, black, and native men who fought in the Civil War's western theatre.

Between 1870 and 1960, Christianity declined dramatically across much of Europe. Not in America. One historian explains why.

When birth control was still taboo, early socialists fought to make it accessible to working-class women.

These maps drawn by Indigenous artists depict a union of visual traditions during the 16th century.

Created in New York by Jewish immigrants, the first comic book superheroes were mythic saviors who could combat the Nazi threat.

In the 50s and 60s, steamy novels about lesbian relationships, marketed to men, gave closeted women needed representation.

In 1619, wealthy investors overthrew the charter that guaranteed land for everyone.

Letters come in each year with pilfered stones from the national park, hoping to break the senders' curse.

Nixon created the blend of Republicanism that remains attractive to a segment of Hispanic voters.

Why was the Golden State once chock-full of memorials to the Southern rebels?

Marking the 400-year African American struggle to survive and to be free of racism.

The new rule dramatically expands the meaning of public charge.

A primary source set and teaching guide created by educators.

They slaughtered our ancestors and derailed our history. And they’re not finished with us yet.

A review of two books exploring the importance and legacy of the founding of the English colony at Jamestown.

With ‘Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood,’ Tarantino slakes his thirst for nostalgia while playing with another piece of history.

Creating the city's bucolic, natural landscapes required a good deal of displacement, technological intervention, and erasure.

Yesterday’s “good" immigrant can turn into tomorrow’s radical.

Other than being alive during the 1960s, the baby boomers had almost nothing to do with the era's social and political upheaval.

When the going gets tough, the tough start something better.

The great showman taught us to love hyperbole, fake news, and a good hoax. A century and a half later, the show has escaped the tent.

People have passionate feelings about the oddball punctuation. Here are some things you probably didn't know about it.

Barnum called himself the “Prince of Humbugs,” which left open the possibility that one day there would arise a king.

Maybelle Carter witnessed the dawn of the recording era and helped create country music as one of the genre's biggest acts.

Conditional inclusion for "model minorities" perpetuates enduring forms of racial exclusion.

How a group of 19th-century Quakers cut their economic ties to slavery.

We might say that these books are recording a life with music, and that they are worth listening to.

The historic pigments in the Forbes Collection include the esoteric, the expensive, and the toxic.

U.S. presidential elections didn't drag on so long before the late sixties.

My family is a success story. We’re also evidence of the long odds African Americans face on the path to success.

For Herman Melville, the color white could be horrifyingly bleak.

Ralph H. Cameron staked mining claims around the Grand Canyon, seeking to privatize it. To protect his claims, he ran for Senate.

If they return governance to its 19th century roots, they will also do away with courts' ability to review agency action.

It also inspired my own scholarship on the national anthem.

How immigrants established vibrant communities in the rural South over a quarter-century.

When the counterculture optimism receded, things got ugly.

Shared enemies and ideology matter more than Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric.

The Supreme Court justice may have been heralded by many of his progressive peers, but the legacy he left behind is far more ambiguous.

The assault rifle has enabled racists to act alone.

The first newspapers contained not high-minded journalism, but hundreds of readers’ letters exchanging news with one another.

Fifty years after the Republican Party hit upon a winning formula, President Trump is putting it at risk.

A review of Casey Cep's new book on Harper Lee's never written true crime book, "The Reverend."

In the 1930s, a forgotten federal bureau experimented with ways to make soy and other products more popular in the U.S.

Richmond has a long-forgotten graveyard that is the resting place for hundreds of slaves. Will a new railway be built over it?

Was Davy Crockett a sellout? And does it matter?

Franklin Roosevelt’s National Firearms Act of 1934 was aimed at John Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, and other murderous gangsters.

Anxieties about Trump’s presidency are the expression of a tradition as venerable as the United States itself.

It lets us avoid harder questions about our culture.

Why it matters what language we use to describe what happened in 1919.

In a taped call with Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan described the African delegates to the United Nations in luridly racist terms.