Excerpts

For two centuries, Karl Marx’s thoughts have significantly impacted US politics. In turn, his close study of the US informed the development of his ideas.

Since the earliest days of the Republic, American citizenship has been contested, subject to the anti-democratic impulses of racism, suspicion, and paranoia.

In 1965, the two intellectual giants squared off in a debate at Cambridge. It didn’t go quite as Buckley hoped.

The poignant images, at once banal and intimate, in the Lynch Family Photographs Collection contain mysteries perhaps only the public can solve.

On the robust influence of labor reform and antislavery ideas and movements on each other from the early National period to the Civil War.

On sanitized depictions of the 19th century, comfort shows, and income inequality.

In the 19th century, dyed ostrich feathers were haute couture, adorning the hats and boas of fashionistas on both sides of the Atlantic.

The legacies of conflict—and their increasingly accessible images in a global age—frame the shared bonds of trauma in keeping their memories alive.

Dylan C. Penningroth challenges nearly every aspect of our traditional understanding of civil rights history.

Aimee Semple McPherson created a wildly popular personal brand as a preacher—then suddenly disappeared.

On the rise and fall of confession in American Catholicism, and what the demography of today's Catholics says about the future of the faith.

On the Second Red Scare and the lessons that it can provide for us today.

Sensitivity to the influence of BaKongo cosmology on Kongo Christianity can help us better understand the choices made by leaders of the rebellion.

Half a century ago the civil rights movement’s effort to carry the campaign for school desegregation from the South to the urban North ended in failure.

After the Civil War, conservatives used terrorism, cold-blooded murder, and economic coercion to fight the new state constitution in South Carolina.

John Scanlan’s “The Idea of Waste” argues that all civilization is an attempt to make waste disappear.

What the Constitution asks of us.

By assigning personal attributes to birth cohort, generationism tends to undermine personal responsibility.

We need more than genealogies to know who we are, and who we ought to become.

His jurisprudence has been overshadowed by that of his showier colleagues but was a model of principled restraint.

The great American writer witnessed the forging of his nation – but Ron Chernow’s portrait cannot see beyond its subject.

Efforts to restrict immigration have long coexisted with — and even reinforced — the nation's economic reliance on Mexican laborers.

A graphic episode from "Do Admit: The Mitford Sisters and Me."

The omissions in Trump's historical narratives reveal how he views national wealth: only the people at the top of the socioeconomic ladder matter.

We were warned.

Can the racialist and eugenicist roots of statistics can be cordoned off from “proper” science?

My dad’s birth certificate said Vicente. His passport said Vince. New legislation would have disenfranchised him.

After peaceful attempts at alliance-building stalled, the Continental Army launched an ill-fated invasion of Quebec in June 1775.

The past and present of counterfactual history, from antiquity to the Napoleonic Wars to a few very active subreddits.

Lessons from the anti-fascist novel in Trump’s second term.

On the troubling history of IQ tests and special education.

On how Latino political power has changed Los Angeles.

The very features that made the LAPD appear more professional also expanded its reach and capacity for violence.

On the “Atta-Girls,” the pilots who chased adventure during the Second World War.

The life and career of Murray Kempton attest to the disappearing ideals of a dying industry. But his example suggests those ideals are not beyond resurrection.

When it came to antisemitism, women’s colleges were no better than the Ivy League.

Police brutality and corruption are painful realities. So are officers who die performing their duty. But the memorial in Washington fails to distinguish them.

This isn’t the first effort by a president’s appointee to streamline government.

Like most cultural shifts in language, the rise of white, upper-middle class women who call themselves ‘mama’ seemed to happen slowly, and then all at once.

A 17th-century column shows that dating has always been an anxiety-riddled endeavor.

Winning more than two elections was unthinkable. Then came FDR.

Intelligence agencies have long gathered information to help their governments get a sense of who the next pope might be.

The revolutionary history behind one of America’s main musical exports.

Examining the tumultuous bond between the two brothers.

Espionage has always been with us, but its rapid growth over the past century may have undermined trust in government.

While Democrats waving a Big Bird doll around on the House floor saved public broadcast funding in the past, this strategy does not seem likely to work in 2025.

She translated Black freedom movements' ideals into forms that children could enjoy and grasp, nurturing their political consciousness through music-making.

Medicaid has always been fiercely contested political terrain, and past cuts have had disastrous human costs.

The trio of interests atop business, military, and government depicted in C. Wright Mills’s postwar critique is no longer united in setting the national agenda.

In the 1980s and 1990s, PC Connection built its brand on a campaign starring folksy small-town critters. They’ll still charm your socks off.