Excerpts

A sweeping new history chronicles a century of unprecedented economic progress driven by markets and innovation.

The Alien Enemies Act, first approved in the late 1700s, was last used during World War II to identify particular foreign nationals living in the US.

It's crucial to understand the real history behind claims that men are being marginalized.

A new collection of essays by David Montgomery shows how he used labor history as a means of grappling with the largest questions in American history.

Understanding the reemergence of the Ku Klux Klan in the early twentieth century gives insight into the roots of today’s reactionary activists and policymakers.

“The world didn’t give It, but the world can’t take It away.”

Socialist legislator Zohran Mamdani is running for New York City mayor against a corrupt, unpopular mayor. Morris Hillquit did the same thing a century ago.

In 1973, the Christmas Bird Count formed the basis for a press freedom case that centered on the impacts of DDT.

The Washington Post has found more than three times as many deaths as the U.S. government documented in its investigation of Indian boarding schools.

Second-wave feminists meant business—but they had a lot of fun at it, too.

Donald Trump’s 2024 win, echoing the Gilded Age, highlights America’s volatile, close elections, partisan divides, and structural barriers shaping politics.

The politician presents a riddle for historians. He was a beloved populist but also a crackpot conspiracist. Were his politics tainted by his strange beliefs?

A new biography explores the American roots of Meir Kahane's far-right ideology — and how the U.S. Jewish establishment embraced his beliefs.

A story of intrigue and power involving union organizers, Black laundry workers, the Mafia, and the FBI in 1980s Detroit.

Instead of trying to recapture working class votes, Democrats should be focused on building the kind of economy they need to expand the political map.

The week between Christmas and the new year offered a rare opportunity for enslaved people to reclaim their humanity.

An enemies list isn’t a weapon against ‘the Deep State.’ It was a tool Richard Nixon used to create a deep state of his own.

According to conventional wisdom, the last quarter century of elections has proved that most of the country leans conservative. It all started with a map.

Construction workers pooled their wages to erect the first one. Their bosses co-opted the gesture, transforming it into today’s consumer spectacle.

A new book considers the challenges of controlling the commercialization of college sports.

Our country has a long history of admiring particular acts of violence.

Can the Clinton campaign slogan chart a path forward for Democrats? Its history tells another story.

The story of credit cards is the story of industry versus regulators. Industry won.

Jack Chick and the origins of the 1980s “Satanic Panic."

One woman’s quest to rescue Boley, Oklahoma.

The Year 2000 computer problem continues to nag at us 25 years later.

When the 1930 Hays Code banned pregnancy in film, birds took over the business of birth.

Belle da Costa Greene, a brilliant archivist, buried her own history.

The New Deal-era creation of “Bill of Rights Day” obscures the real nature and guardrails of American liberty.

By universalizing their own economic history, Western observers have used the past to portray African economic culture as backward and inadequate.

Wayfinding through history and design of the cookbook.

The 1900 Galveston hurricane changed the way we deal with severe weather. But as Hurricane Helene showed, there are still lessons to be learned.

Less about morality than about rights, the Mormon War of 1858 hinged on the issue of polygamy, pitting a Utah community against federal authorities.

Why did it take so long for the U.S. Army to authorize the enlistment of Black men as soldiers?

Empty chairs, empty tables, and the dismantling of the American Dream.

In North Carolina, a Black farmer purchased the plantation where his ancestors were enslaved—and is reclaiming his family’s story and the soil beneath his feet.

Between 40% and 50% of children didn’t live past 5 in the US during the 19th century. Authors documented the common but no less gutting grief of losing a child.

The notion of political realignment in the Lone Star State is older than you think. It goes back to Giant, an acidic novel by Edna Ferber.

An Eisenhower-era initiative holds key lessons for Trump’s immigration policy.

"Published by the Author" explores the resourcefulness of Black writers of the nineteenth century.

Baltimore is Native American land — that's the first thing I want you to know.

A history that is as tactical as it is analytical, as global as it is local, and as based in love as it is in politics.

The meritocratic pitch was emblematic of Democrats’ long march away from working-class voters.

If Trump’s pick to lead the F.B.I. gets confirmed, the Bureau could be politicized in ways that even its notorious first director would have rejected.

The ruling class used false claims about white women’s sexual virtue to regulate sexuality. But the “white slavery” panic was also about race, class and labor.

In 1893, a U.S.-backed coup overthrew the Islands’ sovereign government. What does America owe Hawai‘i now?

The incoming Trump administration wants to take away citizenship for the US-born children of undocumented immigrants. Here’s how.

The closeted right-wing operative has become a tragic character in the American repertory.

We see what we want to see from philosophers such as Locke not because he wrote for our time (or “all time”) but because we imagine he did.

Why should American exceptionalism end at the red-light district?