Excerpts

A new biography of Robert Welch traces the origins and history of the anti-Communist John Birch Society and provides historical perspective on the Trump era.

A new book explores Abraham Lincoln's interactions with African Americans during his presidency.

As much as we may wish otherwise, history gives us few reasons to believe that its moral arc bends toward justice.

Cheap palm oil is part of an interlocking late capitalist system.

Michael A. McDonnell’s book is a wonderfully researched microhistory of the Michilimackinac area from the mid-17th to the early 19th century.

The American socialism movement's open participation in and with the broad democratic left benefits the socialist cause.

At the turn of the century, two important books wrestled with the question of how a nation "conceived in liberty" should engage with the world.

Hannah Zeavin’s history of remote and distance psychotherapy asks us whether the medium matters more than the message.

In his comprehensive study of the national anthem, a historian and musicologist examines our complicated relationship to a famously challenging song.

Tufts Professor Kris Manjapra examines the history of the injustice of abolition in the U.S. and abroad and the need for reparations in his new book.

Can the origins of American religious freedom be traced to the religious and political history of England and its empire?

What did the creator of the Whole Earth Catalog stand for?

On Lewis Mumford, Herman Melville, and the gentle art of looking back in time.

Lin­coln’s interactions with black Americans provides a valuable resource for understanding a more farseeing Lincoln than the voices of despair have described.

Edward Spicer's writings indicate an awareness of the deeply unjust circumstances that Japanese Americans found themselves in within Japanese internment camps.

A new history of Detroit’s struggles for clean air and water argues that municipal debt and austerity have furthered an ongoing environmental catastrophe.

Soul City was a boondoggle—not a story of lost or forgotten roads tragically not taken.

A new book examines explores the ways that an uncritical celebration of “good” gays and “good” gayness can cause harm.

A new book examines how the US government funded the growth of — and delegated governance to — the nonprofit sector.

Smithsonian curator of religion Peter Manseau weighs in on a history that must be told.

Scientists have found toxic levels of the chemical at large. And some groups are making the case to produce even more.

Authorities who investigated Jane Stanford’s mysterious death said the wealthy widow had no enemies. A new book finds that she had many.

Kevin Driscoll’s study of early Internet communities contains a vision for a less hostile and homogenous future of social networking.

These Progressive Era Republicans wanted to run the Federal government like a business.

Decades of biological research haven't improved diagnosis or treatment. We should look to society, not to the brain.

At a time of upheaval, we want to believe that better leaders have the power to change the course of history. But counterfactuals are never simple.

A new book about Watergate is the first to stress how much we still do not know many of the basic facts about the burglary at its center.

A new book chronicles the life of the 19th century political giant of Salmon Chase.

Washington has long been a disproportionately gay city—a mecca for clever, ambitious young men who want to escape their hometowns’ prying eyes.

A new book correctly diagnoses how non-elected agencies are running the country, but falls short on how it got this way.

Her first three books were odes to the world’s bodies of water and their creative power over all life forms.

Clintonites taught their party how to talk about helping people without actually doing it.

Historian Gary Gerstle lays out an era's policies and ideologies, and what undermined them.

Cuba has spent its entire existence as a state and much of its late colonial past in Uncle Sam’s purported backyard.

A new book about Rikers Island is essentially a labor history, revealing how jail guards seized control from managers, politicians, and judges.

Kristen Green’s "The Devil’s Half Acre" recounts the story of a fugitive slave jail, and the enslaved woman, Mary Lumpkin, who came to own it.

After serving in Vietnam, Richard Holbrooke became a proponent of soft power. He would then contribute greatly to American foreign policy.

Previous generations of dancers arranged their steps into tidy, regular phrases; John Bubbles enjambed over bar lines, multiplying, twisting, tilting, turning.

In the post-WWII era, American lesbians negotiated lives between straight marriages and homosexual affairs.

A new history draws on recently declassified archives to illustrate how the Korean War was an intimate civil conflict, not just a proxy battle between superpowers.

Jim Ruland’s book on the legendary punk label helps explain why we lack a meaningful counterculture today.

In 'What It Took to Win,' Michael Kazin traces the history over the past two centuries of what he calls ‘the oldest mass party in the world’.

Emily Bingham’s new book explores the roots of the Kentucky Derby’s anthem. It may not be pretty, but it’s important to know.

From origin stories to blood-purity statutes, we have long enlisted genealogy to serve our own purposes.

The enduring legacy and capacious vision of "Black Reconstruction."

For centuries, sleeping outside has been embraced or condemned, depending on who’s doing it.

Joan Scott’s "On the Judgment of History" asks us to imagine the past without the idea of progress. But what gets left out in the process?

Did the Confederacy have a constitutional right to secede? And did Lincoln violate the Constitution in forcing them back into the Union and freeing the slaves?

A frontier character's life was crafted to be legendary, but was the real person as incredible?

American government succeeded, Tocqueville thought, because it didn’t empower the people too much.