Excerpts

“It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.”— Robert E. Lee, at Fredericksburg

The dictator modeled his racial campaign after another conquest of land and people-America's Manifest Destiny.

In 1931, Zora Neale Hurston recorded the story of Cudjo Lewis, the last living slave-ship survivor. It languished in a vault... until now.

James Callender spread scurrilous rumors about Alexander Hamilton and John Adams. Then he turned on Thomas Jefferson, too.

Too often, we look to history not to understand it, but to seek out confirmation for our preexisting beliefs. That’s a problem.

Once John E. Washington started to dig, he found an incredible wealth of untapped knowledge about the 16th president.

How did a firearm safety and training organization turn into one of America's largest and most influential lobbying groups?

An excerpt from "The Naughty Nineties: The Triumph of the American Libido."

Even Twain's own autobiography cannot reveal the whole truth of the literary legend.

It wasn't some radical left-wing pipedream. It was moderate; and it worked.

As King’s attention drifted to the problems of the urban north, his critiques came to focus on the economic system itself.

James Baldwin's dispatch from MLK's funeral foreshadowed an America we may never escape.

“When the president does it, that means it is not illegal.”

W.E.B. Du Bois on the beauty of sorrow songs.

The political theory of Trumpism.

In his later years, the famous writer surrounded himself with a bevy of adoring adolescents.

Three reasons why you shouldn’t consult the nineteenth-century WebMD archives.

The Founders never intended to create an unregulated individual right to a gun.

Read an excerpt from Al Roker's book about the Galveston Hurricane of 1900.

James Gordon Bennett Jr.'s most eccentric public service announcement.

The conclusions of the 1968 Kerner Report portrayed race relations like no other report in history.