Excerpts

Curated stories from around the web.
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A man walks amongst deteriorating giant busts of U.S. presidents.

Take Me to Your Leader: The Rot of the American Ruling Class

For more than three centuries, something has been going horribly wrong at the top of our society, and we’re all suffering for it.
Silhouetted soldiers with guns in the street at night

The Imperial History of US Policing: An Interview with Stuart Schrader

Dan Berger interviews Stuart Schrader about his new book on US imperialism.
Ripped Puerto Rican flag painted with the words "Together as One"
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No More Annexation: Assassination!

The extremes to which Puerto Rican national Pedro Albizu Campos and his followers fought for independence.
Explorers with banner that reads "History of the United States"
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Who Was Christopher Columbus?

An author's search for the "real" Christopher Columbus.
Photograph of Michael Lind wearing a blazer and tie.

Michael Lind on Reviving Democracy

To fix things, we must acknowledge the nature of the problem.
Portrait of Charles Knowlton

Charles Knowlton, the Father of American Birth Control

Decades after Charles Knowlton died, his book would be credited with reversing population growth in England and the popularization of contraception in the U.S.
Fish in water next to rocks at the base of Kinzua Dam

Halted Waters

The Seneca Nation and the building of the Kinzua Dam.
Picket line march of auto workers.

Detroit Autoworkers’ Elusive Postwar Boom

The men who made the cars could not afford to buy them.
Yellow oily paper with writing

Smell, History, and Heritage

Smell’s diffuse nature requires crossing the boundaries of several subfields within the historical discipline, but also moving beyond the boundaries of history alone.
Photograph of building at Virginia Union University
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A Formerly Enslaved Woman Helped Found a Key American University

Mary Lumpkin’s life helps us to better understand the post-Civil War push for education.
Lithograph of Sir Matthew Hale

On Roe, Alito Cites a Judge Who Treated Women as Witches and Property

Sir Matthew Hale, a 17th-century jurist, has been endlessly quoted by American judges and lawyers, with awful repercussions for women.
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Extremism in America: A Surge in Violence

During the 2010s, violent attacks by white supremacists and other extremists increased, including at a church in Charleston, S.C. and a synagogue in Pittsburgh.
The armored gunboat USS Cairo with its crew standing on deck, 1862.

Union Gunboats Didn't Just Attack Rebel Military Sites – They Went After Civilian Property, too

A new look at detailed data about Civil War skirmishes along the Mississippi River reveals another key to the Union's victory.
Paintings of a line of people in darkness in chains behind a Black woman in the light receiving a diploma.

Slavery Reparations Seem Impossible. In Many places, They’re Already Happening.

At the local level, reparations for slavery are already being paid all over the country.
The Black Panther Party’s Free Breakfast for Children Program in action, New York, 1969. Photo by Bev Grant/Getty Images

The Black Panthers Fed More Hungry Kids Than the State of California

It wasn’t all young men and guns: the Black Panther Party’s programs fed more hungry kids than the state of California.
"What difference would another world make?", Sam Pulitzer, 2021.

New Left Review

Who did neoliberalism?
Illustration of Pimento Cheese on Bread by Carter.

Pimento-cracy

The history of pimento cheese as a working class fixture and a symbol of Southern culture as seen through mystery novels.
John Bubbles dancing and Buck Washington playing keyboard, performing in Brooklyn, New York, 1930.

Never the Same Step Twice

Where previous generations of dancers arranged their steps into tidy, regular phrases, John Bubbles enjambed over bar lines, multiplying, twisting, tilting, turning.
Visitors browse newspaper front pages from the day after the 9/11 terror attacks at the Newseum in Washington, D,C., in 2016. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

When History Is Lost in the Ether

Digital archiving is shoddy and incomplete, and it will hamper the ability of future generations to understand the current era.
A family poses for a photo outdoors.

Queering Postwar Marriage in the U.S.

In the post-WWII era, American lesbians negotiated lives between straight marriages and homosexual affairs.
Painting of Yosemite Valley

How Place Names Impact The Way We See Landscape

Western landscapes and their names are stratified with personal memories, ancestral teachings, mythic events and colonial disturbances.
A photograph of John Brown and scraps of his writing.

The Irrevocable Step

John Brown and the historical novel.
Photograph of woman interrogated by soldier at Korean prisoner-of-war camp

A Permanent Battle

A new history draws on recently declassified archives to illustrate how the Korean War was an intimate civil conflict, not just a proxy battle between superpowers.
Photo of Carson McCullers

The Closeting of Carson McCullers

Through her relationships with other women, one can trace the evidence of McCullers’s becoming, as a woman, as a lesbian, and as a writer.
La Choy cans and food

The Korean Immigrant and Michigan Farm Boy Who Taught Americans How to Cook Chow Mein

La Choy cans are a familiar sight in American grocery stores, but behind this 100-year-old brand is a story fit for Hollywood.
Man holding bible outside Capitol with Trump supporters
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Christian Nationalism Is Surging. It Wasn’t Inevitable.

How the decline of liberal religion transformed American Christianity — and politics.
Illustration of Benjamin Franklin overlaid on textbook excerpt

Ben Franklin Put an Abortion Recipe in His Math Textbook

To colonial Americans, termination was as normal as the ABCs and 123s.
Photo of American dollar bills, worth one hundred each, in a darkened room.

Anatomy of the War on Women: How the Koch Brothers are Funding the Anti-Choice Agenda

Three years ago, a Supreme Court case, the U.S. Census, and anti-Obama backlash set the course for the assault on women's fundamental freedoms.
Photograph of a desk constructed in Poland in the mid 1920s. The desk is an ornate wooden desk; at left, there are three photographs, at right, a lamp and some miscellaneous items.

An Ornate Desk, Family History and the Jewish Past

My mother’s desk connected me with our shared heritage.
JFK and Jackie Kennedy with wedding party

You’ll Miss Us When We’re Gone

The rise and fall of the WASP.
Animals in pairs in the rain board a rocket ship, evoking Noah's ark. Fantastic October 1961, Mike Christie, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

What If… Historians Were Honest About Counterfactuals?

A single choice can branch out to infinite realities.
U.S. Supreme Court building, Washington, D.C.

"A Man of His Time": From Patrick Henry to Samuel Alito in U.S. History

The struggle for progress is always two steps forward and at least one step back.
Justice William O. Douglas. Photography from Bachrach / Getty

Scooping the Supreme Court

The first Roe v. Wade leaks happened fifty years ago.
Portrait of Medgar Evers.

The Day The Civil-Rights Movement Changed

What my father saw in Mississippi.
Anti-abortion protestors and police in front of Supreme Court
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The Anti-Abortion Movement’s Powerful Use of Language Paid Off

Nearing an antiabortion victory five decades in the making.
Town council leader and lawyer Khalid Salman by the graves of his sister and her children, who were among the twenty-four Iraqi civilians killed by US Marines in the 2005 Haditha massacre, Haditha, Iraq, 2011.

Our Hypocrisy on War Crimes

The US’s history of evasiveness around wartime atrocities undermines the very institution that could bring Putin to justice: the International Criminal Court.
Henry Holt, a farmer near Black River Falls, Wisconsin, in 1937, who was moved off land by the Resettlement Administration.

How the Government Helped White Americans Steal Black Farmland

There was once a thriving Black middle class based on farm ownership. But during the twentieth century, the USDA helped erase that source of wealth.
Ballet Folklorico de la Tierra del Encanto dancers entertain attendees during the Cinco De Mayo Fiesta on the plaza in Mesilla, N.M., on May 6, 2017.
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Cinco De Mayo: American As Apple Empanadas

Cinco de Mayo has deep roots in Mexican American history.
Census grid from 1950

Examining 1950 Census Records Reveals Traces of the Datafied State

What the traces left behind in “antique” US census records can tell us about the life of data and its official uses.
Crowd at Black Flag concert

The Unraveling of SST Records

Jim Ruland’s book on the legendary punk label helps explain why we lack a meaningful counterculture today.
Overhead view of Jamestown

Colonial Jamestown, Assailed By Climate Change, Is Facing Disaster

The 400-year-old site of Jamestown, Va., battered by flooding and climate change, is listed as endangered.
Blue and red donkey logo of the Democratic Party.

Hope in the Desert: Democratic Party Blues

In 'What It Took to Win,' Michael Kazin traces the history over the past two centuries of what he calls ‘the oldest mass party in the world’.
Collage of newspaper clippings about Jacqueline Smith's death.

A Christmas Abortion

On Christmas Eve 1955, Jacqueline Smith died from an illegal abortion at her boyfriend Thomas G. Daniel’s apartment.
Crowd at Kentucky Derby

The Complicated Story Behind The Kentucky Derby’s Opening Song

Emily Bingham’s new book explores the roots of the Kentucky Derby’s anthem. It may not be pretty, but it’s important to know.
Justice Clarence Thomas arrives for the ceremonial swearing-in of Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh in the East Room of the White House on Oct. 8, 2018.

Why Clarence Thomas Is Trying to Bring Eugenics Into the Abortion Debate

They really do not have anything to do with each other.
Crowd holding Pride flags at "Say Gay Anyway" rally

‘Don’t Say Gay’ Bills Aren’t New. They’ve Just Been Revived.

At least 20 states have introduced “Don’t Say Gay” laws this year. But in a handful of states, versions of the legislation have existed for decades.
Horse and rider at 1917 Kentucky Derby

Fast Horses and Eugenics

The breeding of race horses validated those aspiring to belong to an American elite while feeding into racist beliefs about genetic inheritance.
Linda Coffee working on the Roe v. Wade case

I Argued Roe v. Wade. It Would Be a Tragedy to Overturn It.

To take away the right to privacy is to take a giant step backward in American history.
Photo of Samuel Alito

Why There Are No Women in the Constitution

There is little mention of abortion in a four-thousand-word document crafted by fifty-five men in 1787. This seems to be a surprise to Samuel Alito.
Firefighters looking at the wreckage of a burned Black church.
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Extremism in America: Missed Warnings

In the years before Barack Obama was elected, many groups on the extreme right kept a relatively low profile. With the election of a Black president, that changed.
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