Excerpts

Billy Bass might be considered mere kitsch, but dismissing this singing fish would ignore some critical linkages between culture and environment.

It’s hardly a secret, but, for a land that bills itself as a land of freedom and opportunity, America can be inhospitable to just about anyone.

A Louisiana tribe’s long fight against the American tide.

Why Americans living in uncertain times bought so many sensational images of shipwrecks and fires.

And the lone forecaster who predicted its deadly path.

The long history of the international olympic committee's war on athletes' free expression.

I spent 600 hours listening in on the people who now run Afghanistan. It wasn’t until the end of my tour that I understood what they were telling me.

'In God We Trust' became the national motto of the US on July 30, 1956. Since then, it has been used to forward a conservative Christian agenda.

"I get teary-eyed with my students."

Was cartoonist Billy Ireland’s pen really mightier than the burning crosses of the KKK?

For Ralph Waldo Emerson, political activism was full of empty gestures done in bad faith. Abolition called for true heroism.

Early Americans coped with disease through narratives that found divine providence and mercy in suffering.

Liberty for some has always entailed a lack of liberty for many others.

Eighty years after a segregation wall rose in Detroit, America remains divided. That's not an accident.

An Oval Office photograph captured the bizarre encounter between the king of rock and roll and the president.

The comment section of a Grateful Dead concert archive offers a sometimes-dark glimpse into a dedicated fan community.

The New Yorker staff writer Steve Coll on the humanitarian catastrophe that is now likely to engulf Afghan civilians, and how Joe Biden is shifting the blame.

Wilson became a great supporter of the 19th Amendment, but only because he worked alongside a woman who spoke his language.

Officials who drove the decades-long war in Afghanistan look back on the strategic errors and misjudgments that led to a 20-year quagmire.

History offers a guide for why the American project in Afghanistan went wrong — and for the future of foreign engagement in the country.

Sarah Chayes describes her experiences in Afghanistan and who's to blame for the problems today.

What’s new about the controversy over the Alamo’s history, and how the way Texans tell its story relates to how Americans see each other.

The platforms are new, but the form has been around for most of a century.

In the two decades before the Hepburn Act’s enactment, two entities vied for the right to coordinate the price and distribution of coal.

Some in The Settlement, founded by formerly enslaved people, say development should be allowed to create generational Black wealth while others disagree.

Jefferson and his connection to partisanship in early America.

Which personality of the American Revolution or the founding era is remembered for the wrong reasons, and why?

The changes in popular photography.

In the contemporary United States, higher education does more to exaggerate than relieve class and cultural divisions.

The newly recovered 1787 Hungerford Deed, detailing a contentious squabble over property and prestige, can now be viewed in a new virtual exhibition.

At the South Carolina State House, the history of Reconstruction has been systemically erased from view.

The daring women whose transatlantic journeys challenged gender roles.

His time working for Monsanto and other polluting industries helped make him the fierce conservative he is today.

How medical humanitarianism helped facilitate exploitation of Africa.

Warnings against "normalizing" outrageous political acts misstate the problem. It’s never the immediate present that gets normalized — it’s the not-so-distant past.

Historical traces of racism and exclusion remain on the island. It’s just that new residents can’t—or won’t—read them.

What the Dred Scott v. Sandford case meant for black citizenship.

The fallout of the January 6th riot and its effect on D.C. statehood.

Divisive concepts, critical race theory, and more in 2021.

We ascribe too much meaning to the early years of the republic.

Take any major American city and you’re likely to find a historically Black neighborhood demolished, or cut off from the rest of the city by a highway.

During the 1860 presidential election, political parties dueled over the intent of the framers.

Novelists concocted elaborate fake histories for mysterious caves in Virginia.

We know why they were built and why they have to come down.

Characterized throughout American history as symbols of crisis, trauma, and grief, these women reject those narratives through world-making of their own.

Historical perspective on school integration.

Questlove’s debut as a director, the documentary "Summer of Soul," revisits a musical event that encapsulated the energies of Harlem in the 1960s.

An architectural historian invites us to sit with her awhile on the American porch.

Dogs were prolific hunters and warm companions for northeastern Native peoples like the Mi'kmaq.

The origins of the Big Apple dance.