Excerpts

How American landscape painters, seen as old-fashioned and provincial, gained cultural power by glorifying expansionism.

An interview with Woody Holton on his new book, "Liberty is Sweet."

Snobbish elitism will hurt their cause.

Poor children don't struggle in school because of their parents. They struggle because of poverty.

In certain corners of the internet, you can actually buy money, but these bills are relics of the Free Banking Era that reigned from the 1830s to the 1860s.

Alternative currencies flourish in desperate times and situations.

Ashley D. Farmer and Tanisha C. Ford explain the importance of biographical writing of African American women and the personal connection involved.

As the Cherokee Nation’s first female chief’s image is minted onto a coin, her full humanity should be examined.

Resiliency and the ability to develop coping mechanisms may define our times.

Elites understood that a unified left spelled doom for their economic advantages.

White racial victimhood was a primary source of power for settlers who served as shock troops for the nation.

College student essays from 1961 underscore why our current trajectory could be devastating.

The pro-cremation movement of the nineteenth century battled religious tradition, not to mention the specter of mass graves during epidemics.

News outlets have apologized for past racism. That should only be the start.

Ran Abramitzky and Leah Boustan on the data illusion of the rags-to-riches stories.

What did the creator of the Whole Earth Catalog stand for?

Consumer debt shapes American lives so thoroughly that it seems eternal and immortal, but it’s actually relatively new to the financial world.

“I’m amazed at how numb many of us can be about these sites.”

Utica became a refugee magnet by accident.

Officials have described the recent shooting as an aberration in the “City of Good Neighbors.” But this conceals the city’s long-standing racial divisions.

"Who shall blame the Sioux for defending themselves, their wives and children, when attacked in their own encampment and threatened with destruction?"

June, PTSD Awareness month, is a time to recognize how trauma has shaped our history.

On Lewis Mumford, Herman Melville, and the gentle art of looking back in time.

To renew Yosemite, California should embrace a once-outlawed Indigenous practice.

In 1790, Philadelphia opened the first American penitentiary, with the nation’s first solitary cells. Black people were disproportionately punished from the start.

Caribbean islands as U.S. territories within an American empire has since the start sparked fierce debates.

Arlington House’s transformations mirror our own.

Lin­coln’s interactions with black Americans provides a valuable resource for understanding a more farseeing Lincoln than the voices of despair have described.

Debates about what should be America’s role in the world are not new—neither is the slogan “America First.”

Railroads and photography, developed largely in parallel and brought about drastic changes in how people understood time and space.

In 1968, Chicago grabbed the eyes of the world when fifteen thousand Vietnam antiwar protesters vowed to shut down the National Democratic Convention.

The ‘Napalm Girl’ photo is much more than powerful evidence of war’s indiscriminate effects on civilians.

Spotless bathrooms used to be a crucial selling point for gas stations.

The Rapid City flood helped define pervasive environmental injustice and catalyze action.

Mississippi makes a move to confront a shameful episode from the past.

The Quaker spiritual journey, often invisible due to its silent, humble and individual nature, is illustrated in this map.

How one-third of “The Watergate Three” got written out of journalism history.

And Congress should claw it back.

Though Helen Keller’s childhood triumph over the difficulties of her deaf-blindness are known, many are unaware of her second act as an activist and orator.

How a phrase tied to authenticity and resistance sometimes just dishes out entertainment.

The government’s failure to fully invest in higher education created our current crisis.

In the early twentieth century, immigrant tenant organizers made rent control laws a reality. Today, working-class New Yorkers still fight for housing justice.

Popular early U.S. tales depicted Muslims as menacing figures in faraway lands or cardboard moral paragons.

How Democrats like Zell Miller and Bill Clinton exacerbated inequality in education

The gap in education equality is holding America back.

The Age of Revolution, known mainly as the period between the American Revolution and the Revolutions of 1848, continued all the way to 1865.

A conversation with historian Donna Murch about the past, present, and future of Black radical organizing.

Despite a thriving queer community in Washington, the 1950s State Department fired gay and lesbian workers en masse.

In the 1960s, Chicago’s white neighborhoods didn’t want Mexican Americans moving in. But one determined real estate broker changed everything.

Shibutani, Haruo Najima, and Tomika Shibutani reported that the vaccination lines stretched as long as 200 yards. “The conditions were atrocious.”