Excerpts

The US Civil War was a revolutionary upheaval that crushed slavery and stoked hopes of a broader emancipation against the rule of property.

While the world’s fastest-growing religious faith offers material benefits and psychological uplift to many, it also pushes a reactionary political agenda.

The killing of three civil-rights workers in Neshoba County, Mississippi, in 1964 changed America.

The actions of one New Jersey royal governor demonstrate a rare case of impartial justice for Native Americans.

A story born in blood.

Automation didn’t start in the age of robots and microchips, but can be traced back to the late 19th century glass industry and its skilled glass workers.

The key witness in Clarence Thomas’s nomination process discusses how sex and race shaped the new Justice’s experience, and her own.

In a new exhibit, Winslow Homer, once seen as the oracle of the nation’s innocence, is recast as a poet of conflict.

In Early America, some prestigious residents advocated for the replacement of cane sugar, supplied by enslaved workers, with maple sugar from family farms.

A new book juxtaposes dominant narratives about motherhood, women’s autonomy, and abortion with the weirdness of ordinary lives.

Diversity, national Identity, and the fraught history behind the State Department’s search for diplomats who “look like America.”

A conversation about "Davos Man: How the Billionaires Devoured the World."

For 30 years, the debate has largely ignored the soaring costs of inaction.

My policy was to work for the best, while expanding NATO to prepare for the worst.

A brief history of how the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) led organized protests against racially-discriminatory housing in Los Angeles.

Forced to bear her enslaver's children, Mary Lumpkin later forged her own path to freedom.

A new book argues that the conflict was a battle for empire.

Why dam removal is critical for restoring the Charles River.

What are elevator passengers listening to?

John Gunther’s “Death Be Not Proud” defied a nation’s reluctance to describe personal loss.

Why the American war was destined for catastrophe and tragedy from the start.

How a massacre on March 22, 1622 irrevocably shaped relations between Indigenous Americans and English colonists.

The Black feminist collective's 1977 statement has been a bedrock document for academics, organizers and theorists for 45 years.

Uncovering the fallacy of his iconic image as a man ruled by solely by reason and logic.

MLB owners’ recent lockout was an effort to reverse the gains that players had won over decades of labor struggle. The owners failed.

Pauline Hopkins, Booker T. Washington, and the fight for "The Colored American" magazine.

For nearly all of its modern existence, the Great Dismal Swamp has been excluded from U.S. history. Now there’s a push to bring its significance to light.

A new book by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Andrew S. Curran examines how 18th-century academics understood Black identity.

In 1929, Ethel Barrymore went on the ‘18-Day Diet.’ From there, it took the country by storm. Until, that is, its disciples began dying.

Unveiling the 1950 Census reveals the value of these types of records.

The system's roots aren't in rescuing children, but in the policing of Black, Indigenous, and poor families.

The lesson of the first Gulf War and its aftermath for handling Russia.

Fire is a planetary feature, not a biotic bug. What can we learn from Yosemite’s experiment to restore natural fire?

Thoreau's time at Walden Pond has provided substantial data for scientists monitoring the effects of a warming climate on the area's plant life.

Her narrative documents the very real dangers enslaved runaways experienced while traveling through so-called "free states" of the North.

The newly conservative court may target the decision that allows for a minimum wage.

Josh Hawley’s attacks on Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson are part of a long, sad tradition.

Thomas Jefferson was a proponent of open migration. But who qualified as a refugee?

Bostonians refused to be forced to house British soldiers. So the army paid rent to willing landlords, and soldiers’ families settled down all over town.

The story of America’s most pliable, pernicious, irrepressible myth.

You can hear it in your head: the grunt your character makes when hopping a fence or leaping into battle. Its sonic roots trace all the way back to 1973.

One focus of the 1960s struggle for civil rights in the North were the construction industries of Philadelphia, New York and Cleveland.

A new book tells the scandalous secrets of a forgotten 19th-century tycoon, Miriam Follin Peacock Squier Leslie Wilde, also known as Mrs. Frank Leslie.

In the 1920s, the public hated cars. So the auto industry fought back — with language.

Barbara Ann Richards designed—and then demanded—the life she deserved.

Ukraine’s wartime communications strategies have roots in World War II.

Why abolitionist Lydia Maria Child raged at President Lincoln’s political calculations.

The attacks on CRT have terrified our educators. But the public school system has always made it hard to teach controversial subjects.

For many Crockettes, the job was glamorous, fulfilling, and "almost subversive."

Balding has been the constant scourge of man since the beginning of time, and for millennia, our best solution was the comb-over.