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Douglas R. Stringfellow reading a statement before the press.

The Congressman Who ‘Embellished’ His Résumé Long Before George Santos

In the 1950's, Rep. Douglas Stringfellow was a promising young congressman with an incredible World War II story. Then the truth came out.
by Gillian Brockell via Retropolis on December 29, 2022
Collage illustration of a civil rights protest, inflated gas prices, and a Richard Nixon campaign poster.

Why America Abandoned the Greatest Economy in History

Was the country’s turn toward free-market fundamentalism driven by race, class, or something else? Yes.
by Rogé Karma via The Atlantic on November 25, 2023
Photo of a crowded street in NYC with carts and vendors blocking the roads

How the NYPD Attempted to Navigate Cultural and Linguistic Barriers in the Early 20th Century

One of the biggest challenges for the NYPD, especially in the years following the turn of the twentieth century, was policing the newcomer immigrants.
by Matthew Guariglia via Literary Hub on November 17, 2023
Henry Kissinger, 1975.

Henry Kissinger: The Declassified Obituary

The primary sources on Kissinger’s controversial legacy.
by Peter Kornbluh, Tom Blanton, William Burr via National Security Archive on November 29, 2023
Devils roasting the earth on a spit.

From Saving the Earth to Ruling the World

The transformation of the environmental movement.
by Christopher Caldwell via Claremont Review of Books on November 1, 2019

Instagram's Aids Memorial: ‘History Does Not Record Itself’

The Instagram feed where friends and family post tributes to loved ones who died of Aids-related illnesses has become an extraordinary compendium of lost lives.
by Kate Kellaway via The Guardian on November 4, 2018
Barbed wire fence

The Scientist Who Lost America's First Climate War

The explorer John Wesley Powell tried to prevent the overdevelopment of the West.
by John F. Ross via The Atlantic on September 10, 2018
New York state legislator George Michaels thinks hard at his desk

Revisiting New York’s Historic Abortion Law in “Deciding Vote”

Jeremy Workman and Robert Lyons’s film reconstructs the passage of a 1970 law that made the state a sanctuary for people seeking abortions.
by Robert Lyons, Jeremy Workman, Linnea Feldman Emison via The New Yorker on November 29, 2023
U.S. President Truman smiles next to the President of Israel, Chaim Weizmann

A Brief History of the US-Israel 'Special Relationship'

A historian of the Middle East examines how connections have shifted since long before the 1948 founding of the Jewish state.
by Fayez Hammad via The Conversation on November 29, 2023
The aftermath of U.S. bombs in Neak Luong, Cambodia, on Aug. 7, 1973.

Kissinger's Bombings Likely Killed Hundreds of Thousands of Cambodians and Set Path for Khmer Rouge

A Cambodian scholar who fled the Khmer Rouge as a child writes about the legacy of Henry Kissinger, who died at the age of 100 on Nov 28, 2023.
by Sophal Ear via The Conversation on November 30, 2023
Henry Kissinger

Henry Kissinger, War Criminal Beloved by America's Ruling Class, Finally Dies

In a demonstration of why he was able to kill so many people and get away with it, the day of his passage will be a solemn one in Congress and newsrooms.
by Spencer Ackerman via Rolling Stone on November 30, 2023
Person holding a blonde American Girl doll and American Girl bag

All Dolled Up

How American Girl transformed the doll world—and why millennials love it so.
by Jayne Ross via The American Scholar on November 30, 2023

Henry Kissinger, Who Shaped World Affairs Under Two Presidents, Dies at 100

He was the only person ever to be national security adviser and secretary of state at the same time. He was also the target of relentless critics.
by Thomas W. Lippman via Washington Post on November 30, 2023
A collage of a feminine hand using a computer mouse and an eye layered over it as if watching.

Many Revolutions

The internet has expanded how we understand the possibilities of the trans experience.
by Jamie Lauren Keiles, Avery Dame-Griff via The Baffler on July 10, 2023
A diagram of the parts of a flintlock pistol.

Bad Facts, Bad Law

In a recent Supreme Court oral argument about disarming domestic abusers, originalism itself was put to the test.
by Duncan Hosie via New York Review of Books on November 25, 2023

A People’s Obituary of Henry Kissinger

For decades, Kissinger kept the great wheel of American militarism spinning ever forward.
by Greg Grandin via The Nation on November 30, 2023
Still from "Rustin" film, on steps of Lincoln Memorial.

The Real History Behind Netflix's 'Rustin' Movie

A new film finally spotlights Bayard Rustin, the gay civil rights activist who organized the 1963 March on Washington.
by Zachary Clary via Smithsonian on November 2, 2023
A scene from the film Orphans of the Storm depicting a group carrying a sign bearing the slogan “Liberté, Egalité et Fraternité,” 1921.

The History of Equality: It’s Complicated

The strange and contradicting development of the liberal version of egalitarianism.
by Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins, Darrin M. McMahon via The Nation on November 16, 2023
Illustration of multiple people drawing the same cover of a book

Big Publishing Killed the Author

How corporations wrested creative control from writers and editors—to produce less interesting books.
by Scott Wasserman Stern via The New Republic on November 15, 2023
A poster of a colonial man ringing a bell in front of Independence Hall with the words "4 Minute Men" at the top
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The US Propaganda Machine of World War I

As the United States prepared to enter World War I, the government created the first modern state propaganda office, the Committee on Public Information.
by Livia Gershon, Nick Fischer via JSTOR Daily on November 17, 2023
Italian Americans watch a policeman arrest a man
partner

The Surveillance of Immigrants Remade American Policing

Modern surveillance policing is rooted in approaches adopted a century ago.
by Matthew Guariglia via Made by History on November 21, 2023
Painting of waves crashing in the ocean by Winslow Homer

After Melville

In every generation, writers and readers find new ways to plumb the depths of Herman Melville and his work.
by Andrew Schenker via The Baffler on November 22, 2023
Vegetable stand at the Mulberry St. bend, photograph by Jacob Riis.

Policing Unpolicable Space: The Mulberry Bend

Sanitation reformers confront a neighborhood seemingly immune to state intervention.
by Matthew Guariglia via The Metropole on May 10, 2018
Cacti in a field

The Lost Savannas of Arizona

Until about 100 years ago, grasses up to two feet high blanketed swaths of the Sonoran Desert.
by David E. Brown via Zócalo Public Square on November 15, 2014
A view from Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn.

How the Ice Age Shaped New York

Long ago, the region lay under an ice sheet thousands of feet thick. It ended abruptly in what are now the boroughs, leaving the city with a unique landscape.
by William J. Broad via New York Times on June 5, 2018
People scavenging through garbage on a barge in New York City
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A History of Garbage

The history of garbage dumps is the history of America.
by Livia Gershon, Sarah Hill via JSTOR Daily on November 10, 2023
A man wearing a cowboy outfit shoots at a series of targets in a sand pit

Home on the (Firing) Range: Gunfight Reenactments, “Old West” Competitive Shooting, and the Myth of Authenticity

Reenactments of the frontier west, complete with cowboy shootouts on main streets, reproduce a narrative of history that is widely accepted by millions.
by Jennifer Tucker via The Panorama on November 15, 2023
Blanche and Alfred Knopf

Toward the Next Literary Mafia

Understanding history can help us understand what will be necessary if we’re serious about finally having a more diverse, less exclusionary publishing industry.
by Josh Lambert via Public Books on November 21, 2023

Surviving a Wretched State

A discussion on the difficulty of keeping faith in a foundationally anti-Black republic.
by Melvin L. Rogers, Neil Roberts via Boston Review on November 15, 2023
Gen. James Longstreet.

The Conquered General

The back-and-forth life of Confederate James Longstreet.
by Richard Kreitner via Slate on November 20, 2023
Black residents of Natchez, Miss., walk alongside a railroad track in August 1940.

One of the Biggest U.S. Slave Markets Finally Reckons With Its Past

Natchez, Miss., is beginning to highlight the history of its enslaved people—including at a Black-owned bed and breakfast in former slave quarters.
by Sarah Enelow-Snyder via Retropolis on November 26, 2023
Painting of the Great Fire of Pittsburgh from right outside the city

The Asbestos Times

Asbestos was a miracle material, virtually impervious to fire. But as we fixed city fires in other ways, we came to learn about its horrific downsides.
by Mano Majumdar via Works In Progress on November 15, 2023
Untitled (Strike), Dox Thrash, c. 1940.

Hard Times

The radical art of the Depression years.
by Rachel Himes via The Nation on November 27, 2023
The front of the Midgeville asylum in Georgia

What Makes a Prison?

Wherever we find the state engaged in potentially lethal repression, we find prison.
by Dan Berger via Public Books on November 1, 2023
Independence Day Celebration in Centre Square by John Lewis Krimmel (1787–1821).

The Brief Period, 200 Years Ago, When American Politics Was Full of “Good Feelings”

James Monroe’s 1817 goodwill tour kicked off a decade of party-less government – but he couldn’t stop the nation from dividing again.
by Erick Trickey via Smithsonian on July 17, 2017
Policemen confronting a crowd of protesters

How a Revolutionary Was Born

Carl Skoglund's early life as a militant worker in Sweden prepared him for leadership in the 1934 Teamster Strikes.
by Joe Allen via Jacobin on December 21, 2015
Winnifred Eaton

The First Asian American Screenwriter

The woman with the pen name Onoto Watanna had a stunningly productive literary career as a cookbook writer, novelist, and screenwriter.
by Ben Railton via The Saturday Evening Post on May 9, 2023
Map showing the U.S. broken up into four countries, including an expansive Confederate States of America.

A Map of the Disunited States, "as Traitors and Tyrants Would Have It"

The U.S. divided into Pacific, Atlantic, Interior and Confederate States.
by Frank Jacobs via Big Think on October 30, 2017
Folded newspapers sitting in a printing factory

The Times-Picayune's Historical Use of the N-Word

A survey of the New Orleans paper from 1837 to 1914 shows reporters and editors frequent used the racial slur to trivialize Black people in news and commentary.
by Bala James Baptiste via African American Intellectual History Society on September 8, 2023
Front page of the Saturday Evening Post

The Persistence of the Saturday Evening Post

When George Horace Lorimer took over as editor of the Saturday Evening Post, America was a patchwork of communities. There was no sense of nation or unity.
by Amanda Darrach via CJR on November 9, 2021
Pearl Curran

Ghostwriter and Ghost: The Strange Case of Pearl Curran & Patience Worth

In early 20th-century St. Louis, Pearl Curran claimed to have conjured a long-dead New England Puritan named Patience Worth through a Ouija board.
by Ed Simon via The Public Domain Review on September 17, 2014
Corn in a basket.
partner

Translating Corn

To most of the world, “corn” is “maize,” a word that comes from the Taíno mahizwas. Not for British colonists in North America, though.
by Matthew Wills, Betty Fussell via JSTOR Daily on November 22, 2023
U.S. Capitol building

Searching for the Perfect Republic

On the 14th amendment – and if it might stop Trump.
by Eric Foner, Ted Widmer via The Guardian on November 15, 2023
Digitally altered portrait of a man in a suit with his face pixelated, framed by computer windows.

What the Doomsayers Get Wrong About Deepfakes

Experts have warned that utterly realistic A.I.-generated videos might wreak havoc through deception. What’s happened is troubling in a different way.
by Daniel Immerwahr via The New Yorker on November 13, 2023
A stylized drawing of Bill Erquitt.

The Death of a Relic Hunter

Bill Erquitt was an unforgettable character among Georgia’s many Civil War enthusiasts. After he died, his secrets came to light.
by Charles Bethea via The New Yorker on November 26, 2023
Women with blankets and fans, in a scene from Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon.”

The Missing Politics of Scorsese’s ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’

Blaming corrupt individuals rather than federal Indian policy for the violence and exploitation perpetrated against the Osage Nation misses the mark.
by Robert Allen Warrior via New Lines Magazine on October 20, 2023
Lily Gladstone and Martin Scorsese on the set of "Killers of the Flower Moon."

How Publicity of Killers of the Flower Moon Recalls Rosebud Yellow Robe’s 1950 Hollywood Tour

On the performance of authenticity and the native stories left to tell.
by Paul Morton via Literary Hub on November 20, 2023
The shrouded bodies of people killed in the Israeli bombardment of Gaza.

“Genocide” Is the Wrong Word

We reach for the term when we want to condemn the worst crimes, but the UN’s Genocide Convention excuses more perpetrators of mass murder than it condemns.
by James Robins via The New Republic on November 21, 2023
Wikimedia Foundation servers.

Dead Links

Maintaining the internet data of dead people.
by Tamara Kneese via Public Books on October 31, 2023
A bearded man dressed as a lumberjack with an axe resting on his shoulder.

Lumbersexuality and Its Discontents

One hundred years ago, a crisis in urban masculinity created the lumberjack aesthetic. Now it's making a comeback.
by Willa Brown via The Atlantic on December 10, 2014
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