Excerpts

The Comte de Buffon's thirty-six volume Natural History claimed that America was a land of degeneracy. That enraged Thomas Jefferson.

How the ANC went from an organization whose role in the struggle was hotly debated, to being widely hailed as the heir to the international anti-apartheid movement.

How a New Deal senator’s anti-monopoly investigations changed American business.

What's in a name? According to the "Dictionary of American Family Names," it depends.

The enduring necessity (and importance) of a nearly 200-year-old technology.

A new history argues that illiberalism is not a backlash but a central feature from the founding to today.

New books examine the place of work in our lives—and how people throughout history have tried to change it.

As the first Native American Cabinet member, the Secretary of the Interior has made it part of her job to address the travesties of the past.

When "The Emancipator" was first published in 1820, its original owner had to answer for why he owned Nancy and her five children.

A whistle-stop train tour, and some plain speaking spur Harry Truman's come from behind win in 1948 over Thomas Dewey.

On the St. Louis theme park that never made it past the drawing board.

May not amount to much, actually. Chicago 2024 is not Chicago 1968.

Throughout the 60s and 70s, conservative activists led a counterattack against campus demonstrators by demanding action from college presidents, courts, and police.

In which “the intellectual handmaidens of the capitalists” are taken to task.

History not only explains how the industrial Midwest became Trump country, but also how the area's politics may shift again.

While some liberals decry abortion bans as a war on women, history reveals that this charge distorts the reality of their impact.

Considering how relationships of cooperation and perhaps even solidarity might be forged between human beings and animals.

Black cowboys made up as much as a quarter of working ranch hands during late 19th century. That legacy has been obscured.

Ronald Reagan proved instrumental to Southerners bringing their cultural conservatism to center stage for the Republican Party.

The risks of calling on politicians to push back against the court must be weighed against the present reality of a malign judicial dictatorship.

A changing NBA fan base drove the league toward an embrace of Black culture, and social justice politics.

The nuisance of a new season.

I’ve been going back to eastern Kentucky for over a decade. Since 2016, something there has changed.

The history of the Nutrition Facts label exposes the power — and limitations — of such transparency.

The history of the property tax system and its structural defects that have led to widespread discrimination against Black Americans.

It’s not that there has been too much student protest. It’s that there has not been much, much more of it.

In April 1968, students took over campus buildings in an uprising that caught the world’s attention. Fifty years later, they reflect on what went right and what went wrong.

How Keith Haring got his halo.

On the long tradition of Black third-party activism.

An interrogation of The New York Times’ archive reveals a sordid record of support for American wars, right-wing dictatorships and U.S.-backed regime-change.

Abortions happened in Arizona, despite a near-complete abortion ban enacted in 1864. But people also faced penalties for them, including a female doctor who went to prison.

In 1790, U.S. men were about twice as likely as U.S. women to be literate. But by 1870, girls were surpassing boys in public schools.

How you, your friends, and Lin-Manuel Miranda all learned this catchy, state-naming tune.

A troubling TikTok conspiracy theory questions whether Keller was “real.”

The GOP’s new embrace of Lincoln, emancipation, and Juneteenth is no sign of progress.

A web dictionary devoted to historical English slang—five hundred years of the vulgar tongue.

Historians Rosemarie Zagarri and Holly Brewer explain the anti-monarchical origins of the Constitution and the presidency.

What did the signs and the phases of the moon mean to moon farmers in the 1840s?

The nation's historical markers delight, distort and, sometimes, just get the story wrong.

Historians are working to shine a light on Alice Ball’s legacy and contributions to an early treatment of a dangerous and stigmatizing disease.

Connie B. Gay and the roots of country music militarization.

Oil’s rise was as dependent on the old as much as the new. The industry also benefited from changes in agriculture.

Why should taxpayers fund schools that violate their own values, the Moms for Liberty wonder? A new book traces how this kind of thinking about public spending came to be.

"I was always working on a theory of America."

A conversation with the activists and writers about their wide-ranging history of the politics of the common good and togetherness.

Neighborhoods that once promised prosperity now offer crumbling infrastructure, aged housing stock, and social animus.

By looking at the labor history of academia, you can see the roots of a crisis in higher education that has been decades in the making.

Character codes have been evolving through multiple systems over multiple centuries, this is the story.

On the Oneida Community, a radical religious organization practicing “Bible communism,” and eventually, manufacturing silverware.

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