Excerpts

Curated stories from around the web.
New on Bunk
A young man reading a printed newspaper.
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The Enduring Value of Student Newspapers

More than curiosities, college papers are unique pedagogical tools that help undergraduates achieve media literacy.
John Lewis.

You Must Do Something

Tracing John Lewis’s lifelong fight for democracy and inclusion.
Wrangell-St. Elias National Park & Preserve in Alaska.

Why You've Never Heard of the Largest National Park in the US

First of all, it's in Alaska.
Christopher Columbus

On the Mysteries, Real and Imagined, Surrounding Christopher Columbus

Columbus lives on as a political and cultural symbol—hero, villain, myth—revealing how belief, not fact, shapes history.
Pete and Charlotte O'Neal at the United African Alliance Community Center (UAACC) in Tanzania.

The Black Panthers Who Never Came Home

Fifty-nine years after Huey Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panthers, Charlotte and Pete O’Neal remain in exile in Tanzania.
USS Maine

Why is America’s First Great War of Empire Barely Remembered at Home?

On the legacy of the United States' involvement in the Spanish-American War and the Philippine Revolution.
The unveiling of the Deak Monument, statue of Ferenc Deak, in Budapest 1887.

Transatlantic Perspective on Liberty

Rose Wilder Lane in the 1930s decried Europe's repressive government. Who's freer now?
John Brown stands armed, positioned before Union and Confederate people fighting amid smoke and devastation.

Why Donald Trump Wants to Erase John Brown’s Fiery Abolitionist Legacy (and Why He Will Fail)

Reflections on Harper's Ferry amid a government shutdown.
The founders at the Constitutional Convention with the "We the People" as a backdrop.

“Shall We Have a King?”

Some delegates at the Constitutional Convention wanted a strong executive, while others feared the American president might become a king.
John Roberts in DC with the media taking photos of him walking.

Inside John Roberts’ Decades-Long Crusade Against the Voting Rights Act

Roberts rose from Rehnquist’s clerk to Chief Justice, leading efforts to weaken the Voting Rights Act and redefine voting protections.
When the U.S. Navy was half the age it is now: an artist’s depiction of American warships bombarding San Juan, Puerto Rico on May 12, 1898 during the Spanish-American War. (Photo by: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

The Birth Pangs of the U.S. Navy

It was founded 250 years ago today—and, oddly, was promptly ordered to attack what is today its biggest base.
Diagram of a cotton gin

How Eli Whitney Single-handedly Started the Civil War . . . and Why That’s Not True

The real Whitney story is less grand than the legend, but more interesting and, ultimately, more edifying.
Illustration of Time Berners-Lee peering from behind browser windows.

Tim Berners-Lee Invented the World Wide Web. Now He Wants to Save It

In 1989, Sir Tim revolutionized the online world. Today, in the era of misinformation, addictive algorithms, and monopolies, he thinks he can do it again.
Black and white image of a long road with a car in the distance.

Living in the Shadow of Your Father’s Iconic Song

Sarah Curtis: “Maybe we’ve just learned what my teenage daughter does not yet fully know: that to be held to a law is often to be loved.”
George Washington saying farewell to his officers in 1783.

Where George Washington Would Disagree with Pete Hegseth About Fitness for Command and a Warrior

Washington’s ‘warrior ethos’ was grounded in decency, temperance and the capacity to act with courage without surrendering to rage.
LAPD Chief Daryl Gates in 1991.

When Antipathy to the LAPD’s Chief Was the Great Unifier

A memoir explores L.A.'s political culture after the Rodney King beating.
Federal encampment on Cumberland Landing, Virginia.
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How the Union Lost the Remembrance War

The victors of the American Civil War failed to write their story into the history books, leaving a gap for the mythologizing of the Confederacy.
A suburban road in California.

What Auto Insurance Tells Us about Race, Risk, and Responsibility

Who gets to move freely in California’s auto insurance system?
Cloverlick Freewill Baptist Church in Harlan County, KY.

For Many Miners, Religion and Labor Rights Have Long Been Connected in Coal Country

The retirement of United Mine Workers of America’s longtime president is a reminder that labor and religion have always been entangled in coal country.
Black and white icons of people gathered into the shape of the US.

Are You a ‘Heritage American’?

Why some on the right want to know if your ancestors were here during the Civil War.
Photograph of Edgar Allen Poe cut into the shape of a coffin.

To Haunt and Be Haunted: On the Exhumation of Edgar Allen Poe

On the terror of being buried alive and Americanism in Poe’s work.
A screenshot of Aveline, the Black protagonist of Assasin's Creed: Liberation.

The Canceled Civil War Assassin's Creed Game Was a Powder Keg Waiting to Explode

Ubisoft was reportedly working on a game set after the Civil War era, but canceled it due to politics and protagonist backlash.
Illustration of Karl Marx in front of map of the United States.

The Triumphs and Travails of American Marxism

Karl Marx never visited the United States, but he and his ideas left an imprint nonetheless.
Illustration of a founding father standing in front of a distorted mirror.

What the Founders Would Say Now

They might be surprised that the republic exists at all.
Map fof the San Francisco Bay area.

How California’s Legacy of Violence Against Indigenous People Impacts the Present Day

Unpacking the complexities surrounding Native authenticity.
National Guard soldiers patrolling in front of the White House.
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History Shows the Perils of Troops Policing American Cities

Sending Redcoats to American cities worked in the short term. But over time, it alienated even the colonists most loyal to the British.
Charles Mitchell

The Lesson of 1929

Debt is the almost singular through line behind every major financial crisis.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower meets with five national labor leaders.

American Labor’s Shameful History of Support for Zionism

The US labor movement has never been neutral: its union officialdom has a more-than-century-long history of allying with Zionism.
The Statue of Liberty as clouds roll in.

The End of Asylum

The second Trump administration has undone the division between political and economic migrants. Did it make sense to separate them to begin with?
Illustration of Rip Van Wrinkle.

Wake Up, Rip Van Winkle

Washington Irving’s story isn’t just about a very long nap. It’s about the making of America.
Table set with an 18th-century meal of wine, meat, and vegetables.

So Much Madeira

What the Founding Fathers ate—and drank—on July 4, 1777.
A reenactor portraying a British soldier at Fort Ticonderoga.

You Have No Idea How Hard It Is to Be a Reenactor

Benedict Arnold’s boot wouldn’t come off, and other hardships from my weekend in the Revolutionary War.
Lincoln, Washington, and a snippet from a lyceum address.

The Lincoln Way

How he used America’s past to rescue its future.
Portrait of Charles Lennox, the third Duke of Richmond reading by a tree.

Secrets of a Radical Duke

How a lost copy of the Declaration of Independence unlocked a historical mystery.
Illustration by Matt Huynh.

What Is Colonial Williamsburg For?

Telling the full story of the town’s past is an easy way to make a lot of people mad.
Illustration of a Revolution, of a mob holding forks and knives, fighting men on horses.

The Insurrection Problem

Violence has marred the American constitutional order since the founding. Is it inevitable?
An 1877 depiction of Pontiac speaking at a tribal council.

How Native Nations Shaped the Revolution

The Founders were inspired—and threatened—by the independence and self-governance of nations like the Iroquois Confederacy.
British flag with writing that says, "Liberty for Slaves."

The Black Loyalists

Thousands of African Americans fought for the British—then fled the United States to avoid a return to enslavement.

The Constitution is a Political Document, Not a Sacred One.

Don't let its universalist language fool you.
Screen shots and captions from a public service campaign about the economy.

The Ad Campaign for Capitalism

In the 1970s, corporate America struck back at the forces attempting to rein it in. One of their tactics was a public service announcement.
Front entrance of the New York Stock Exchange building reflected in a modern glass building.

The A.I. Boom and the Spectre of 1929

As some financial leaders fret publicly about the stock market falling to earth, a new book recounts the greatest crash of them all.
Supreme Court and Donald Trump

The Supreme Court Should Listen to the Founders on Tariffs

James Madison and John Marshall would say Trump’s tariffs are legal.
Kaleidoscopic portrait of Eliza Schuyler.

The Many Lives of Eliza Schuyler

She lived for 97 years. Only 24 of them were with Alexander Hamilton.
Native American activists protesting the former mascot and name of the Washington Commanders.

The Annotated History of a Slur

Digging through dictionary archives to uncover the slowly changing meaning of “redskin.”
Milton Friedman (left) in 1978.

Freedom and the State in Thomas Sowell’s America

Tracing Thomas Sowell’s shift from Marxism to the Chicago school of economics.
Clarence Thomas and small sections of the Supreme Court's opinion in Students for Fair Admissions versus Harvard.

Clarence Thomas Accidentally Laid the Groundwork for Reviving Affirmative Action

In trying to shut the door on race-conscious affirmative action, he may have quietly left another affirmative action door wide open.
Richard Harding Davis.

How America’s First Star War Reporter Set the Tone For a Century of Journalism

Unpacking the sensationalist, and occasionally biased, work of Richard Harding Davis.
An image representing seeing fire through the eye holes of a klan hood

Sins of the Fathers

In Life of a Klansman, Edward Ball’s white supremacist great-great-grandfather becomes a case study in the enduring legacy of slavery.
Demonstratoars protest Donald Trump’s comments about Canada becoming the 51st state of the United States, March 22, 2025.

Anti-Americanism in Canada Is Nothing New — It’s a Tradition

Trump’s tariffs/threats have sparked boycotts and motivated voters north of the border, but Canadians’ desire to distance themselves from the US has deep roots
Italian designer Giorgio Armani.

Why Italian Americans Loved Armani

With sumptuous fabric and big shoulder pads, 'King Giorgio' draped us in an outsized identity.
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