Excerpts

Gordon, Peter, Vincent Colyer, and the story behind slavery's most famous photograph.

How Felix Moses, a Jewish Confederate soldier, was recast in a Lost Cause myth.

A review of Columbus's impact on the political, economic, and religious effects within the Renaissance period of Europe and the beginning of global exploration.

How liberal Protestants helped to shape the US's views on liberalism, human rights, and current political divides.

Only one Philadelphia paper covered Black Bottom. And it wasn't The Inquirer.

L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is productively understood in terms of this widespread fight over the value of fire and the shape of capitalism.

Two new books make the case that “when and where you are Latino matters.”

Reflections on popular books written about hip-hop.

Remembering my father’s imprisonment at a Japanese prison camp.

Theodore Roosevelt and the historical discipline.

“Nordic Utopia? African Americans in the 20th Century" exposes a far charted corner of Black history, expanding beyond Paris: the artists who went north.

The founding father’s long-overlooked passion for scientific inquiry.

How the Scopes trial informs today's culture wars.

New York's skyscrapers soar above a century-old steam network that warms the city. While everywhere else moved to hot water, Manhattanites still buy steam.

Students in Beijing rallied for free speech and democratic reforms in 1989. The crackdown that followed altered U.S.-China relations.

How Israel’s war in Gaza echoes the ancient doctrine of conquest behind Spain’s colonization of Latin America.

Donald Trump's quest to acquire Greenland has a precedent in US Cold War history. We should consider it a cautionary tale.

Efka—the German rolling paper company—was a Nazi regime favorite. After World War II, it was refashioned as a darling of the pot-infused counterculture.

After two years of war and tens of thousands of casualties, Israel and Hamas have accepted a peace plan put forward by US President Donald Trump.

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

Tracing John Lewis’s lifelong fight for democracy and inclusion.

First of all, it's in Alaska.

Columbus lives on as a political and cultural symbol—hero, villain, myth—revealing how belief, not fact, shapes history.

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

On the legacy of the United States' involvement in the Spanish-American War and the Philippine Revolution.

Rose Wilder Lane in the 1930s decried Europe's repressive government. Who's freer now?

Reflections on Harper's Ferry amid a government shutdown.

Some delegates at the Constitutional Convention wanted a strong executive, while others feared the American president might become a king.

Roberts rose from Rehnquist’s clerk to Chief Justice, leading efforts to weaken the Voting Rights Act and redefine voting protections.

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

The real Whitney story is less grand than the legend, but more interesting and, ultimately, more edifying.

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.

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.”

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

A memoir explores L.A.'s political culture after the Rodney King beating.

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.

Who gets to move freely in California’s auto insurance system?

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.

Why some on the right want to know if your ancestors were here during the Civil War.

On the terror of being buried alive and Americanism in Poe’s work.

Ubisoft was reportedly working on a game set after the Civil War era, but canceled it due to politics and protagonist backlash.

Karl Marx never visited the United States, but he and his ideas left an imprint nonetheless.

They might be surprised that the republic exists at all.

Unpacking the complexities surrounding Native authenticity.

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

Debt is the almost singular through line behind every major financial crisis.

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

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

Washington Irving’s story isn’t just about a very long nap. It’s about the making of America.

What the Founding Fathers ate—and drank—on July 4, 1777.