Excerpts

“Start-ups: they need philosophers, political theorists, historians, poets. Critics.”

Outbreak narratives from past diseases can be influential in the way we think about the COVID pandemic.

On the ten year anniversary of Aziz Rana's book, Henry Brooks interviews him on his influential book and what it might teach us about the legacies of populism.

Far from a partisan for free markets, the Founding Father insisted on the need for economic planning. We need more of that vision today.

The 1898 Wilmington insurrection showed “how people could get murdered in the streets and no one held accountable for it.”

For decades, the Republican Party has used what's known as "the Southern Strategy" to win white support in the region.

After the Capitol was cleared of insurrectionists on January 6, it wasn't lost on many that cleaning up the mess would fall largely to Black and Brown people.

The storming of the Capitol was an expression of the antidemocratic strands in American history.

A musicological conversation about the history and social value of Black music.

A Trump-Biden transition is sure to be scary. But it’d be hard to beat Buchanan-Lincoln.

The history of unpleasant odor, or miasma, has unexpected relevance in the time of COVID-19.

A leading expert on financial crises explains how the pandemic is upending economic orthodoxy and raising the stakes of the 2020 election.

Horseback travel time is only part of the story.

A conversation about the roots of organized resistance to federal regulation of public lands in the American West.

The modern conception of freedom emerged as an antidemocratic reaction by elites who wanted to curtail state power.

On the passage and enforcement of laws to exclude or deport immigrants for their beliefs, and the people who challenged those laws.

It's remembered as one of the best industrial jobs a worker could get in postwar America. Less remembered is how brutal life on the factory floor was – and still is.

Are White House doctors keeping the public adequately informed about President Trump’s battle with COVID-19?

Calling QAnon a "cult" or "religion" hides how its practices are born of deeply American social and political traditions.

From plague times to the coronavirus, the history of our flawed ability to process mass casualty events.

Why secession, separatism, and disunion are the most American of values.

An interview with historian Charles B. Dew.

Environmental historian Donald E. Worster pushes back against recent characterizations of Muir as a racist.

Susan Neiman, a philosopher who studies Germany’s confrontation with its Nazi past, examines how the United States can remember slavery and segregation.

One of the most powerful phrases in the Civil Rights Act is often viewed as a malicious joke that backfired. But its entrance into law was far more savvy.

"I think we have to increase our shame — and I don't think shame is a bad thing."

Heather Ann Thompson explains what’s changed and what has stayed the same.

A conversation with John Nichols about the night in 1944 that altered the trajectory of the Democratic Party.

A new book details how the young nation regarded its recent and more ancient pasts.

Keeping meat production moving during the pandemic is dangerous. But history shows that there’s little Americans won’t sacrifice for a cheap steak.

A conversation with historian Marcus Rediker about multiracial mobs, history from below and the memory of struggle.

For hundreds of years, false theories of “innate difference and deficit in black bodies” have shaped American responses to disease.

In the Jim Crow South, the Alabama Communist Party distinguished itself as a champion of racial and economic justice.

A conversation with Mike Davis about what must be done to combat the COVID-19 pandemic – and all the other monsters still to come.

A new book suggests that the plague’s horrors haunt modernist literature between the lines.

In his new book, Jon Mooallem tells the story of the Great Alaska Earthquake and Genie Chance, the woman whose voice on the radio held everyone together.

The 1930s Socialist Party is often seen as a marginal force, but its successes laid the groundwork for the next generation of organizing.

The Chinese Hospital in San Francisco is still one-of-a-kind.

Lessons from a century ago.

“Growing your own vegetables is great; beating Nazis is great. I think we’re all nostalgic for a time when anything was that simple.”

A biographer of Day talks about what we can learn from the iconic activist.

A new book chronicles the twists and turns of the 75-year-path to securing the vote for women.

A conversation with Breanne Fahs on the lasting lessons of women's anger.

The US carceral state is a monstrosity with few parallels in history. But most accounts fail to understand how it was created, and how we can dismantle it.

Jim Downs discusses the plight of freed slaves during the Civil War and Reconstruction.

The historian Frank M. Snowden discusses the politics of restricting travel during epidemics and more.

The Civil War started with a surrender, ended with a series of surrenders, and had several of its major campaigns end in surrender.

How "Choose Your Own Adventure" books indoctrinated ‘80s children with the idea that success is simply the result of individual “good choices.”

Its title, 'The Negro', seemed innocuous enough. But Malcolm X intended it to invoke a much harsher meaning.

Why Lincoln’s "one war at a time" doctrine saved the Union.