Excerpts

Protesters are tearing down statues of Columbus and other villains of history. The true test will come when they reckon with their heroes.

Eighteen years of photographs at a Virginia dragstrip show a multiracial community united by their love of fast cars.

Maya Lin recounts the experience of creating the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

50 years after closing its schools to fight racial integration, a Virginia county still feels the effects.

A scholar of the history of race sets out on an exploration of his own family roots, and despite his better judgement, is moved by what he discovers.

In 1988, Jesse Jackson ran for president on a platform that included universalist policies like single-payer. His success terrified establishment Democrats.

The pandemic doesn’t just threaten our loved ones, but knowledge of our past — so Nelson George went and found his.

Reflecting on the impact of an education in an institution deliberately set up to defy court-ordered desegregation.

Can experiencing elements of what is was like in the past make us better historians?

A "test tube baby" grapples with the dark corners of 20th century reproductive technologies.

A public historian recommends tactics for explaining an oft-left out period.

My family’s immigrant journey and James Earl Ray’s path to targeting MLK, Jr., intersected at a corner of East Hollywood.

"You can't disentangle blackness and California."

A restless history of Washington Heights.

Ben Marks on all that came of one interview in 1994.

What I saw as the editor of “The Art of the Deal,” the book that made the future President millions of dollars and turned him into a national figure.

I first met him 21 years ago, and now our relationship is the subject of a new movie. He’s never been more revered—or more misunderstood.

How Charles Schulz's classic strip shaped the comic medium.

Michael W. Twitty on the changing tides of plantation interpretation.

A Jewish American reflects on a life spent amidst the ghosts of the American South and the former capital of the Reich.

Looking to Louisa May Alcott's heroine for inspiration.

After the television cameras went away, a North Carolina city debated the future of its toppled Confederate statue.

A historian looks back at the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow in her home state.

Natasha Trethewey on experiencing a past not our own.

Lost letters between Jane Addams and her best friend leave questions for historians,

How the term "blog" came into being.

Power and ambition in women are often hidden, buried, disguised, crushed, mocked, diminished, punished, or excoriated.

DC v. Heller recognized an individual right to possess a firearm under the Constitution. Here’s why the case was wrongly decided.

Why did I never recognize all the important and valuable stories my mother told me as "history"?

How can we understand the physical pain of others?

On reckoning with a fraught literary history.

How can we be sure the atrocities of the past will stay in the past?

I told her we were brought over the Rio Grande on a raft. I never called it a smuggling.

A childhood lesson in the backseat of a 1973 Mustang.

Following in the footsteps of 20th century African Americans, Ethelene Whitmire experiences a 21st century transatlantic crossing.

White traders couldn’t have loaded their ships without help from Africans like my great-grandfather.

In uncovering the blackness of Peoples Temple, I began to better understand my community and the need to belong.

Reliving the events of 1998 was traumatic, yes—but also worth it, if it helps another young person avoid being “That Woman”-ed.

John McCain's harrowing account of nearly six years as a North Vietnamese prisoner of war, in his own words.

Reflections on live-tweeting the Great War.

He came to this country a refugee, and paid his debt forward.

I was raised to venerate Lee the principled patriot—but I want no association with Lee the defender of slavery.

Why a 47-year old anti-colonialist critique by Chilean dissidents may be newly relevant in the Trump era.

The decline of America’s rural health system and its toll on my family.

Gaming in the shadow Charlottesville's "Unite the Right" rally.

Olaudah Equiano, native of Africa, survivor of the Middle Passage and enslavement, tells his story.

When the government executed Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the welfare of their two boys was a secondary concern.

"The Best of Everything" outlined the dynamics and the costs of sexual harassment, decades before anyone talked openly about it.

The end of an era.

A personal investigation of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864.