Excerpts

Mo Rocca on the struggle to depathologize homosexuality.

An excerpt from ‘We Return Fighting,’ a groundbreaking exploration of African American involvement in World War I.

When America’s first aerial cameraman met an infamous spirit photographer, the chemistry was explosive.

Expanding the radical promise of the American Revolution.

Lizabeth Cohen on the poverty and prosperity of the American city.

In the mid-20th century, Playboy wasn't just an erotic magazine. It was an architectural movement as well.

Frank Olson died in 1953, but it took decades for his family to get closer to the truth.

American revolutionaries had a far wider range of reasons for supporting rebellion than we often assume.

Emma Tenayuca and the San Antonio Pecan Shellers Strike of 1938.

The complicated privilege of forming a new constituency.

It was a struggle to even get the president to go to a game.

Looking to Louisa May Alcott's heroine for inspiration.

In 2002, still reeling from the dot-com crash, Google realized they’d been harvesting a very valuable raw material — your behavior.

The dark side of the medical industrial complex.

Charles Postel on the temperance crusade that galvanized the American women's movement.

Groundbreaking discoveries... but at what cost?

If you like hot chicken, perhaps you’d be interested in knowing where it comes from.

When the counterculture optimism receded, things got ugly.

How did the plain green lawn become the central landscaping feature in America, and what is the ecological cost?

"Inevitably, the age of national bootblacks and national oyster houses and national blacksmiths produced national history books."

The expansion of banks like Citigroup into Cuba, Haiti, and beyond reveal a story of capitalism built on blood, labor, and race.

In 19th-century America, rare old bones were a resource like any other.

Frank Malina's scientific dreams were as radical as his politics.

The context and aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision to kill the Civil Rights Act of 1875.

At what point does resistance become the only choice?

Most communities barely had a police force and citizens shared responsibility for enforcing laws. Then the car changed everything.

In the realism, the set pieces, the operatic music, Sergio Leone was pointing the way towards modern filmmaking.

The economics of childbirth under slavery.

From Bob Dylan to David Bowie to The Beatles, the legendary Beat writer’s influence reached beyond literature into music in surprising ways.

Their 1964 collaboration, "Nothing Personal," brought together aspects of American life and culture through photographs and text.

In an exclusive excerpt from his new book, 'Calder: The Conquest of Time,' Jed Perl reveals a hidden side of the artist.

John Canaday's poems look at nuclear weapons from the intimate perspectives of its developers.

When a trillion locusts ate everything in sight.

25 years later, The Bell Curve’s analysis of race and intelligence refuses to die.

A city on the edge.

On the 1909 National American Woman Suffrage Association Convention in Seattle.

We don't think much about where our waste goes, but the history of what we do with poop is also the history of how we grow food.

From 1966-1969, the underground newspaper 'San Francisco Oracle' became exceedingly popular among counterculture communities.

50 years later, Philip Levine's poem, "They Feed They Lion," helps us remember and understand that time.

Exploitation and predatory pricing drove the transformation of the beef industry – and created the model for modern agribusiness.

Dale Carnegie treated the employee-employer relationship as a sacred, symbiotic bond.

Dispatches From Flatville, Illinois.

Junk Science, paternalism, and a misplaced faith in 'expertise.'

The improbable success of the curveball.

The development, use, and marketing of medications for children in the 20th century.

The function of the "innovation" buzzword is to sustain the myth that business genius creates society’s wealth.

The 1868 presidential election through the eyes of a Southern white woman.

Father and son alike, suspicious of too much charisma.

We all know the stereotypes. But what about the suburbs of utopians and renegades?

Silicon Valley veteran Mike Monteiro explains how designers destroyed the world.