Excerpts

In 1931, Herbert O. Yardley published a tell-all book about his experiences leading a covert government agency called the Cipher Bureau.

Hard thinking on difficult and uncomfortable questions about how to keep everything from falling apart.

You’re passionate. Purpose-driven. Dreaming big, working hard, making it happen. And now they’ve got you where they want you.

The history of enslaved firefighters offers a cautionary tale about the dangers of relying on involuntary labor to fight blazes.

Trump is freezing the United States’ foreign aid agency, which grew from our relief efforts over the world’s wars and crises.

Created in 1867, the short-lived office was mired in the ongoing American strife after the Civil War.

Kennedy wants to create "wellness drug rehabilitation farms." But the U.S. tried it before, and it didn't work.

How America’s search for total security keeps making the world more dangerous.

Rethinking the job of history — and the American Historical Association — after the veto of the Gaza “scholasticide” resolution.

Opponents of birthright citizenship say there weren't any “illegal aliens” when the 14th Amendment was drafted. They're wrong.

William H. Townsend drew the rebels as they stood trial, leaving behind an invaluable record.

A new book reveals the jazz musician’s mother and sister were arrested several times for prostitution in New Orleans.

Standardized forensic exams are a useful tool for sexual-violence investigations—or they would be if police departments consistently tested their findings.

The attack on it is a violation of the nation’s post–Civil War rebirth.

Amazon will never be neighbourly.

The left case for an independent Canada.

The Mexican origins of the birth control pill, and the trade dispute with the U.S. it generated.

A swamp with a busy road going right through the middle, Washington’s airport was called “a disgrace.”

Efforts to target immigrants amid the 1992 L.A. Uprising point to what deportations might look like under Trump 2.0.

Defending academic freedom doesn’t mean exaggerating the threats to it.

How an erroneous 18th-century story about the “Caucasian race” led to a centuries of prejudice and misapprehension.

The region has unique political traditions tailor-made for the momentum gathering behind economic populism in the Democratic Party.

We have yet to solve the problems that Carter confronted head-on as president.

While modern women poets have found inspiration, collard references appeared in racist limericks during Jim Crow.

A narrative not of brain drain but of Black aspiration.

Nine Inch Nails, the Manson Family, and the contradictions of Los Angeles.

For more than a century, conservation policy has focused on economic development and wisely using natural resources.

Comparing Trump to Hitler and Mussolini obscures the basis of his mass appeal.

The Ordinance, which prioritized cars on the city’s roadways, quickly became the template for the country.

And a walk downtown in search of her saloon, the Bucket of Blood.

President Woodrow Wilson presided over the segregation of government workers, putting Black people behind screens and in cages in 1913.

The general’s campaign through the South is known for its brutality against civilians. For the enslaved who followed his army, though, it was a shot at freedom.

Abortion exceptions in legal history.

Or, a brief history of today's erasure of history.

What are the most important insights historians have offered about the American Revolution in the decades since the Bicentennial?

President Donald Trump says McKinley made the United States prosperous through tariffs. Historians say that’s an incomplete understanding of the 25th president.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s nomination to lead HHS reflects the rising power of an anti-vaccination movement more than 100 years in the making.

On Pierrepoint B. Noyes, H.G. Wells, and the “Superweapons” of early science-fiction.

NYC history suggests that the Left might profitably revive proportional representation as a tool to build its electoral strength.

Gender-segregated bathrooms tell a story about who is and who is not welcome in public life.

The true cost of the immigration policy can be measured in the generations of Chinese Americans who were never born.

The president who built his fan base on isolationism is pivoting to a kind of imperialism that the U.S. hasn’t seen in decades.

Why is America’s near-mythic dynasty so nasty up close?

New York City’s renewed efforts to tackle homelessness and untreated mental illness is raising questions about civil liberties, safety and effective care.

Supreme Court rulings on gun laws highlight the struggle to balance individual rights and public safety.

He’ll run into the same roadblocks as Presidents Taft, Roosevelt, Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Carter, Reagan, Clinton and Bush, among others.

What the President’s confrontations with Panama, Greenland, Canada, and Colombia suggest about his expansionist vision.

It wouldn’t take much, the fan explained, just some radioactive material inside the players, who would then undergo a physical examination.

It made itself bigger.

A new book traces the rise of the Israel lobby and the challenges it has faced as global criticism of Israel has intensified.