Excerpts

The famed opera has been criticized for its racist portrayals of Asian-Americans.

A conversation about the Cold War’s profound and negative influence on the liberal worldview.

The welfare rights movement of the 1960s and ’70s resisted invasive policies. Their animating vision: that society treat every mother and child with dignity.

A-bomb architect “was no Einstein,” historian says, but he did Nobel-level work on black holes.

What it means to be a Black worker in the time since slavery.

How documenting the history of the drug war is a “community project” and reflections on 1990s rap music's anti-crack hits.

Uncovering a tradition of African American radicalism that was—and is—a crucial part of the American left’s history.

Jim Crow terror, within and outside the law.

Watching 'Oppenheimer' with the author of a definitive account of the Manhattan Project.

The long-term impact of Quarles’s work.

Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton lived an unapologetic life that transcended genres and gender norms beyond her bluesy hit song and the “Elvis moment.”

What happened after the destruction of Greenwood, once home to some of the wealthiest African Americans in the US.

The esteemed labor historian reflects on his life and career, including Berkeley in the 1960s, Walter Reuther, the early UAW, Walmart, Bill Clinton, and more.

"Ice: From Mixed Drinks to Skating Rinks – A Cool History of a Hot Commodity" reveals the history of frozen water and its impact on American life and culture.

A conversation with Colin Kaepernick on Black studies, white supremacy, and capitalism.

We should interrogate nostalgia’s primacy without advocating for its eradication.

Botanists Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter braved rapids and steep cliffs to catalog numerous plant species.

Jackie Robinson is popularly portrayed as the man who broke baseball’s color line by quietly enduring racist abuse. But that narrative is much too narrow.

A new biography of King emerges at a "critical juncture" for his legacy.

Why were in-flight meals so much better in the past?

A conversation on Du Bois' perspective on empire and democracy, the development of his anti-imperial thought, and his vision for transnational solidarity.

On the music’s African-American tributaries, its unpredictable politics, country radio’s woman problem, and working on Ken Burns’ forthcoming doc.

“A brand mascot that jumped off the cereal box”: a TV critic explains the multimedia character Trump created.

Gun control is actually an American tradition.

In his new book, historian Nicholas Dagen Bloom chronicles the collapse of public transportation in US cities — and explains who really deserves the blame.

Professor Blackhawk’s new volume attempts to put Native peoples’ stories at the center of the history of the United States.

Why some antebellum reformers thought convents were incompatible with "true womanhood."

In the early 1900s heyday of the Socialist Party, Texas boasted a vibrant state party that attracted oppressed farmers in droves.

How the utopian notion of the U.S. as a meritocracy became so ingrained in the American psyche.

The inventor, who baked the first batch of the iconic gum 40 years ago, talks about the genesis of an American rite of passage.

A conversation with historian David Hollinger about the rise of evangelicalism, the decline of mainline Protestantism, and the nature of America's secularism.

The author of a new book, The Underwater Eye, discusses how film enables audiences "to connect to the most remote environment on the planet: the ocean."

The John Birch Society pushed a darker, more conspiratorial politics in the ’50s and ’60s — and looms large over today’s GOP.

Two former CIA officials weigh in: "It's time to call him what he is: 'A liar.'"

A new history examines Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, the West Coast's settler ideology, and recent turbulence in the world of tech.

The Black Woman’s Organizing Archive highlights work in the 19th and 20th centuries that benefitted Black women and American society as a whole.

A conversation with presidential biographers Jonathan Alter and Kai Bird.

An interview with the author of "The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism."

How market fundamentalists convinced Americans to loathe government.

Much of what's happening in American race relations traces back to 1966, the year the Black Panthers were formed.

U.S.-Iranian relations, the interrelationship between Iranian development and the global oil market, and the future of economic warfare.

A new book reverses the narrative of the Age of Discovery, which has long evoked the ambitions of Europeans looking to the Americas rather than vice versa.

Stephanie St. Clair, who gained notoriety as a criminal entrepreneur and a fashion icon, was a powerful Black woman able to wrest control in a world run by men.

Political scientist Richard Bensel explains the feedback loops between policy commitments of political elites and the regional distribution of political power.

A new book examines military manuals as a genre to understand what armed counter-revolutionaries think of as the right way to do what they do.

Smith's influence on American politics, and the misunderstanding at the heart of our idea of the "champion of capitalism."

The author of a new biography explains how liberals played an important role in enabling Hoover’s antidemocratic crusade.

The concept of "heathenism" may seem outmoded, but it defines race and religion in America.

A new book recovers the many ways Protestant Americans, especially women, communicated with the dead from the 17th century to the rise of séance Spiritualism.

The late socialist writer's first book was a deep exploration of how the US labor movement became so weakened.