Excerpts

Twenty-five years of neoliberal political economy are to blame for today's regime of surveillance advertising, and only public policy can undo it.

Abortion and "The Scarlet Letter."

How an intense unclassifiable relationship shaped the history of modern thought.

She was Helen Keller before Helen Keller. Then her mentor abandoned their studies.

King recalled: “I liked his voice, though I had no idea he was getting ready to conquer the world.”

To many urban Americans in the 1920s, the car and its driver were tyrants that deprived others of their freedom.

Andrew Liptak on the origins of cosplay.

Creating the myth of the gold rush with the help of daguerreotypists.

The baby boy who would one day become the renowned and feared leader of the Lakotas was the second child of Returns Again and Her Holy Door.

For years, the idea seemed immoral and dangerous.

Since 1892, the United States has deported more immigrants (over 57 million) than any other nation.

Bohemian Greenwich Village and the secret club that sparked modern feminism.

The rights and responsibilities of 17th-century fatherhood in England's North American colonies.

As the gunmakers’ markets matured through the Civil War era, some began mastering the art of product promotion, following the lead set by Samuel Colt.

In Hell Creek, Montana, with a lot of dynamite.

As Frederick Douglass’s master put it, a slave who learned to read and write against the will of his master was tantamount to “running away with himself.”

In 1968, Chicago grabbed the eyes of the world when fifteen thousand Vietnam antiwar protesters vowed to shut down the National Democratic Convention.

In the 1960s, Chicago’s white neighborhoods didn’t want Mexican Americans moving in. But one determined real estate broker changed everything.

An intimate look at the creation of an iconic album.

On the Grateful Dead's “New Speedway Boogie,” and the true end of the Sixties.

The strange past and even stranger future of the stationary bicycle.

On the women who kickstarted the ecological restoration movement in America.

William James, Charles Peirce, and the questions that roiled them.

Using manumission to disentangle blackness and enslavement in Cuba, Louisiana, and Virginia.

Colonial lessons in civility from the Five Nations of the Haudenosaunee.

Winfred Rembert on protesting in the Jim Crow South and getting arrested.

An accounting of racist murders in nineteenth-century America.

In good ways and bad, the Golden Arches have always loomed large in the African American experience.

On the growing tide of racial animosity in 1930s Los Angeles.

How cars changed the lives of black Americans.

When Pete Townshend whacked Abbie Hoffman offstage.

Lisa C. Hickman reconstructs William Faulkner’s tumultuous Hollywood sojourn of 1932–1936.

Ben Katchor's Brief History of the Dairy Restaurant.

When Charles Sumner died in 1874, a bill he had sponsored two years earlier threatened to overshadow his legacy.

Before Americans worried about government or corporate surveillance, 19th-century criminals took advantage of a new technology to steal valuable information.

A story born in blood.

Forced to bear her enslaver's children, Mary Lumpkin later forged her own path to freedom.

On who gets caught in the crosshairs when it comes to “beef."

Airlines sometimes bumped Black passengers off of flights to make room for white travelers, even during refueling stops.

An excerpt from a new book that explores the intertwined history of travel segregation and African American struggles for freedom of movement.

People’s stories described a sluggish process of discovery: you had to discover the earthquake, even though it had already been shaking you for what felt like a very long time.

Built on the momentum of earlier struggles for justice, the department store movement channeled the power of workers and consumers to promote black freedom.

The idea of liberty has often seemed to mean freedom from government and its spending. But there is an alternate history, one just as foundational and defining.

Jackalopes have migrated from Wyoming across the nation, but what’s really known about the mythical creature?

After the passing of William James, mediums across the US began receiving messages from the late Harvard professor.

On the relationships formed and marriages made by the fur trade.

How the Windy City became a Latinx metropolis in the second half of the twentieth century.

Once Peter Parker received his miraculous spider powers, the last thing he wanted to do was go out and get a colorful costume and fight crime.

Over the past century, the United States came to rely ever more on economic coercion—with questionable results.

On the devout abolitionists who excoriated American exceptionalism.