Excerpts

A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin’s Freedom Budget is the key to understanding the appeal of the Democratic nominee for NYC mayor.

Through his work in both the Teamsters and the NAACP, Ernest Calloway embodied the potential of a united labor and civil rights movement.

Although the American tradition is broadly liberal, it is best understood as divided between two schools: classical and managerial liberalism.

Richard Beck charts how 9/11 shapes the way we live now.

As "The Best American Poetry" anthology ends after nearly forty years, the contradictions of its influence stand out.

VHS, Star Wars, and the freedom to remember.

From the Watts Riots to 2025 wildfires, California’s FAIR Plan has stood in the way of transformative change.

Archives from Madison, Wisconsin show the role of mechanized horses, or equine "cyborg" labor, in the growth of U.S. cities.

Audre Lorde’s legacy shows how feminism can honor difference, as Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor argues in this review.

King recalled: “I liked his voice, though I had no idea he was getting ready to conquer the world.”

As legend has it, an onstage altercation took place between the two icons in the middle of The Who's set at Woodstock. Or did it?

Now they’ve become an American ritual.

To him, the Revolution was “not made but prevented.”

Trump isn’t the first U.S. president to use the military base to incarcerate migrants.

A habitual drunkard’s journey through guardianship and the asylum.

As a polio survivor, I am a dinosaur today. My great hope is that our country’s living memory of the disease ends with my generation.

Globalization left millions behind as a policy and transformed the world politically, a new book argues.

Conspiracy theories about her disappearance do a disservice to the pilot’s remarkable, flawed legacy.

Tenure is more than just academic freedom; it is also about labor protection, and it has a long history.

"The older I got, the more I realized that our acceptance was . . . fragile, conditional. The signs were small but telling.”

Cy Endfield, film noir, and the blacklist.

A biography of Ghanaian leader Kwame Nkrumah casts the post-WWII era as a Black liberation epic rather than a psychodrama between Moscow and Washington.

From the 1994 Crime Act to Trump 2.0.

The ’80s I thought I remembered now feel very different to me.

When Bruce Lee met Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, he was still known as Lew Alcindor, the most hyped young basketball star in history.

The site’s volunteers face threats from Trump, billionaires, and AI.

Journalist Rebecca Grant shifts the abortion conversation away from laws and morals to focus on access: getting people the care they seek.

How pastors’ wives use power and submission.

The story of the woman who inspired Janis Joplin’s signature song, then slipped away.

The Trump administration has stepped up its antagonism of America’s treasured museums.

Recent news coverage has called the Privacy Act of 1974 “Watergate-inspired,” but such framing misses the big picture.

Academic freedom from the Middle Ages to apartheid South Africa to now.

An exhibit at the Jewish Museum reveals an artist for his time — and ours.

At a time when allegations of antisemitism are rampant and often incoherent, historian Mark Mazower offers a helpfully lucid history of the term.

Even when it was considered socially unacceptable, American women were knocking down pins on the local lanes.

To understand Congress’s abdication, look at the history of presidential selection.

Proposed as a compromise to ensure the ratification of the new US Constitution, the Bill of Rights has become a critical protector of civil liberties.

This important but little-known chapter of Black-Jewish history in the United States is worth remembering.

According to John Cassidy’s century-spanning history "Capitalism and Its Critics," the system lives on because of its antagonists.

The New Deal didn’t solve the economic problems behind the Great Depression—it made them worse.

The 1983 invasion of Grenada raised questions about the legitimacy of American reactions to a communist presence on the island.

Pregnant and facing decades in prison, the mother of Tupac Shakur fought for her life — and triumphed — in the trial of the Panther 21.

Why has a relatively conventional history of the War of Independence drawn such an outraged response?

Historian Richard White on the greed, ineptitude and economic cost behind the transcontinental railroads, and the implications for infrastructure policy today.

Today’s “medical freedom” warriors are drawing on a centuries-old American tradition.

How Samuel Francis wrote the recipe for MAGA.

Risky loans, regulatory gaps, and Wall Street practices fueled the 2008 financial crisis and led to the Great Recession.

Louisiana’s 1845 and 1852 conventions reveal partisan tensions over the economy that shaped Black struggles and opportunities for decades.

As the last Holocaust survivors approach the end of their lives, an AI scholar grapples with technology that promises to freeze them in time.

Where Western men’s clothing traditions came from, how they have evolved, and how they're being continually reinterpreted.