Excerpts

These invisible chemicals changed the Mohawk way of life. They’re probably already in you, too.

Formed in 1912 for “women who did things—and did them openly,” the Heterodoxy Club laid the groundwork for a century of American feminism.

Women’s military uniforms were once about making soldiers look feminine. Now they’re about enhancing performance.

I wish I’d asked my grandfather more questions.

The Office of Malaria Control in War Areas sought to curb malaria transmission in the United States.

For all her influence as an activist, intellectual, and writer, Angela Davis has not always been taken as seriously as her peers. Why not?

In Theodor de Bry’s illustrations for "True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia," the Algonquin are made to look like the Irish. Surprise.

The dark side of Crèvecoeur's "Letters from an American Farmer."

The journey of Omar Ibn Said.

Louis Farrakhan and the Black Lives Matter protests.

By all accounts, young Bill Owens was a natural song-catcher, trawling across Texas in the 1930s, the golden era of American field recording.

The US-Mexico border wall is disrupting and destroying the lives of a united binational community.

Hundreds—or maybe thousands—of women and girls performed and recorded rock and roll in its early years.

Debating torture and counterinsurgency—a century ago.

It exposes their failed mortgage debt relief policies after the Great Recession.

"On the Road" is a sad and somewhat self-consciously lyrical story about loneliness, insecurity, and failure. It’s also a story about guys who want to be with other guys.

In 1970 Roger Freeman, who also worked for Nixon, revealed the right’s motivation for coming decades of attacks on higher education.

Meyer Berger’s 1938 look at the technology, history, and culture of eavesdropping, from the wiretapping of Dutch Schulz to the invention of the Speak-O-Phone.

After the deadliest home-front disaster of the war, African Americans throughout the military took action to transform the nation's armed forces.

Weird, revealing, and incredibly fun to read.

Romanticized stories about the Second World War are at the heart of American exceptionalism.

Tourist-driven curiosity about the so-called "haunted asylum" has led many to overlook the real people who once were institutionalized within these hospitals.

His communism brought the great American singer Paul Robeson trouble in the US, but helped make him a hero in China.

McGirt v. Oklahoma and the failure of denationalization.

If we’re never going to hold U.S. war criminals accountable, what moral credibility do we have when we condemn Russia and others?

Missionaries spread the idea that Christianity accounts for American success throughout the world.

The mass defection of CEOs of some of the nation’s most powerful corporations from President Trump’s now-defunct Manufacturing Jobs Initiative.

The history of race has animated a highly contentious, sometimes fractious debate among scholars.

Two preachers who shaped American Christianity diverged sharply on whether to protest or exploit slavery, with consequences that persist today.

What the recent debates over presentism get wrong.

As climate change increases the severity of extreme weather events, the nation’s legacy is at risk.

At a time when the US was divided on questions of gender, Alice de Rivera decided that she was fed up with her lousy high school.

On the religion, segregation, the civil rights movement, violence, and hypocrisy.

It’s popularly remembered as a moderate demonstration. In fact, it was the culmination of a mass, working-class movement against racial and economic injustice.

Bartholomew’s legacy demonstrates with particular clarity that planning is never truly neutral; value judgments are always embedded in engineers' objectives.

The Civil Rights Movement was a radical struggle against Jim Crow tyranny whose early foot soldiers were Communists and labor militants.

Masks and social distancing are largely gone, but just as consequentially, a less visible pandemic intervention is ending: universally free school meals.

It’s only by acknowledging the roots of identity politics in the emancipatory movements of the past that we can begin the work of formulating an alternative.

Coleman’s approach to improvisation shook twentieth-century jazz. It was a revolutionary idea that sounded like a folk song.

Because cycling was an important mode of transportation for agricultural workers and a popular competitive sport, police saw it as a way to target immigrants.

The legislature established a committee last year to “promote patriotic education.” Drafts of one of its pamphlets reveal an effort to sanitize history.

Three veterans of the civil rights movement fought segregation in St. Augustine, Fla., enduring violence and racism in America’s oldest city.

In 19th-century New England, rule-breaking Yankees were a source of national pride.

The historical narrative surrounding the wartime confinement of ethnic Japanese in the United States grows ever more complex.

“They’ll tell you it was abortion. Sorry, the historical record’s clear: It was segregation.”

Felix Frankfurter warned that politicians, not the courts, should make policy.

The "Pleasure Gardens" of the 18th Century captivated the public with a heady mix of fantasy and vice.

How a re-creation of its most famous battle helped erase the meaning of the Civil War.

How America’s infatuation with World War II has eroded our conscience.

Venture into the Montana eatery, once a gambling den and opium repository, that still draws a crowd.