Excerpts

Romanticized notions of Southern gentility are at odds with historical reality as the lives, culture and contributions of the enslaved are becoming integral on tours.

From unjustified stops of Black teenagers to a device to torment people in custody, racist police brutality runs deep.

The USDA has become an inefficient monster that often promotes products that are bad for consumers and the environment. Let’s replace it with a Department of Food.

The history of anti-Chinese violence in Truckee, California, is as old as the town itself.

A counter-narrative to Samuel Moyn’s "Humane": drone warfare and the long history of liberal empire blurring the line between policing and endless war.

Private bunkers and the people who build them.

A review of "Escalante’s Dream: On the Trail of the Spanish Discovery of the Southwest."

These storylines portrayed those addicted to drugs and alcohol as lunatics whose only cure can come from punitive measures, abstinence, and “tough love.”

Dustin Tahmahkera details the life of the last chief of the Comanches, Quanah Parker.

“European and Indian men—as captors, brokers, and buyers—used captured and enslaved women to craft relationships of trade and reciprocity with one another.”

There are always three violences. The first is the violence itself.

"What the Catholic church wanted us to understand about women and anger—that we simply didn’t experience it—backfired spectacularly."

Preservationists like Jane Jacobs are urbanist heroes. But their rules can stifle.

Aaron Sorkin's new film dramatizes three pivotal moments in the lives of comedy legends Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.

While he opposed slavery and southern secession early in his career, as president Andrew Johnson turned out to be an unsightly bigot.

Extending that compassion today could reverse past wrongs.

Fifty years later, the legacy of the National Cancer Act illustrates the need for a broad approach.

“Rescue Me,” on repeat.

Reiner, Stephen Colbert, Jordan Peele, Steve Carrell, Tina Fey, Julia Louis-Dreyfus: Their comedy descends directly from the Works Progress Administration.

The new film is set in a now-bulldozed Black neighborhood, so why is it all about whites and Puerto Ricans? Because it really takes place in Los Angeles.

Two recent books put the reemergence of anti-immigrant sentiment in the Trump era into historical relief.

FDR managed inflation during World War II through government policy. Today’s calamities call for a similar approach.

Scientific research and historical accounts can help us identify and dissect the threat of ‘coercive persuasion.’

"If you read enough sources, you run into cases of slaves spending a lot of time over Christmas crying."

Understanding the battle over immunization—from the pre-Victorian era onward—between public health and the people may help in treating anti-vax sentiment.

On the failed dreams and forgotten ruins of William Hope Harvey.

Sweeping the human story into a cosmic tale is a thrill but we should be wary about what is overlooked in the grandeur.

The holiday favorite is an allegorical prayer for peace.

The Christmas classic, released 75 years ago, conveys many messages beyond having faith in one another.

A sweeping new history traces the rise of characters caught in a Manichaean struggle between good and evil.

A century of tax avoidance later, the dynasties created in the 1900s are going strong.

Why songs of the southland are really northern.

Virginia Tech project finds forgotten Army surveys that reveal World War II lingo and “the good, the bad, the ugly, heroic, not heroic” attitudes of soldiers.

Photographer Drew Gardner painstakingly recreates the images with the notable figures' descendants.

Four decades on, the perpetrators of the El Mozote massacre have not been held to account.

It is fair to ask whether Grant’s prewar experiences define the entirety of his character, and who sets the bar for which public figures deserve commemoration.

As the country grew, each census required greater effort than the last. That problem led to the invention of the punched card – and the birth of an industry.

Some personal reflections from American Historical Association president James H. Sweet on the recent wave of "divisive concepts" laws.

Held across the U.S. in the early 20th century, the events sought to raise awareness about workhorses' poor living conditions.

In the 1930s, Socialist and Communist organizers tried to help Black sharecroppers rise up against their oppressors.

A conversation with the biographer of radical Jewish 'revenge theologian' Meir Kahane.

The maternal health intervention from a century ago that worked.

Counting both uninfected and infected people helps us better understand a pandemic.

The Confederate memorial carving at Georgia’s Stone Mountain is etched with more than a century of racist history. But tearing it down won’t be so easy.

The rise of tactical gun culture among civilians reveals a new front in the U.S. battle against nativist authoritarianism.

How we wound up with the worst of both worlds: thousands of speed-related deaths, and a system of enforcement that is both ineffective and inescapable.

The Age of Revolution inaugurated a new era in modern history defined not only by new democratic institutions but also by despots and charismatic leaders.

The national parks are the closest thing America has to sacred lands, and like the frontier of old, they can help forge our democracy anew.

The plant explorers of the USDA succeeded in bringing the world’s fruits to American supermarkets. But at what human, ecological, and gustatory cost?

Is media bias attributable to corporate power or personal psychology? Upton Sinclair and Walter Lippmann disagreed.