Excerpts

The connections between private industry and government were much more fluid than was previously imagined.

The history of the United States as the history of capitalism.

What if America's inability to agree on its shared history—and how to teach it—is a cause of our polarization and political dysfunction, rather than a symptom?

Sixty years ago, a pathbreaking jazz album fused politics and art in the fight for Black liberation. Black artists are taking similar strides today.

Pittsburgh’s Lower Hill District was razed by the federal government 65 years ago. Now developers are testing the question of how to correct for a racist past.

How white-owned newspapers incited racial terror in America.

The inventor thought her pregnant sister looked like “a beach ball in an unmade bed.”

The untold story of a world-renowned architect, an obsessive librarian, and a $5,500 house that never was.

Channeling conservative, white anger about public schools is a long-running political strategy.

Born after the Civil War, he turned himself into its most powerful witness—and modernized the American novel.

New books investigate the brutality of the internal slave trade by focusing on businesses, and examine the role of white women in enslaving Black people.

Annie Berke reviews Elana Levine's book on a pivotal genre and its diverse fandom.

A 90-year-old amateur archaeologist who claimed to have detonated the first atomic bomb was one of the most prolific grave robbers in modern American history.

Hundreds of scientists had worked on mRNA vaccines for decades before the coronavirus pandemic brought a breakthrough.

Drawing analogies between industries can be instructive. But only if we do it right.

The last from-the-top critique of American overconsumption generated a massive backlash.

Candies of the Halloween season have roots in the sweet treats and real horrors of the Great War.

A striking photo project reveals the maintenance yards, cemeteries, and shipping containers where many of the memorials to white supremacy ended up.

On the robbing of Indigenous graves throughout the 19th-century.

How Rosalind Franklin, the crystallographer whose data were crucial to solving the structure of DNA, was written out of the story of scientific discovery.

An introduction to salvage anthropology.

Inside the profession, the battle over the 1619 Project continues.

In the same year as the Salem Witch Trials, a more common and lesser known witch hunt occurred in Stamford, Connecticut.

They’re hip, business-savvy, and know how to cast a spell: How a new generation of witches and warlocks selling $300 wands conquered Salem.

Carving pumpkins, trick-or-treating, and wearing scary costumes are some of the time-honored traditions of Halloween. But why do we do them?

A radio drama series from 1941 based on Dr. Hereward Carrington's case records of psychic phenomena.

How white feminism failed Native Americans in the late-19th century.

Colvin, 82, is headed to court in Montgomery, Ala., to petition for her record to be cleared.

Researchers discovered the remains of a mid-19th century house, a centuries-old Chinese coin and other traces of the short-lived town of Terrace.

And that’s exactly why there is no need to overreact.

Lawmakers are undoing the worst parts of 1980s drug legislation, but they have forgotten its ties to immigration enforcement.

A digital atlas that visualizes Manhattan’s and Brooklyn’s transformations during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

An underexamined aspect of Manchin’s pro-business positions in the Senate is his early membership in the American Legislative Exchange Council.

A reissued collection, long out of print, revives the author’s masterly stories of horror and unease.

Why Democrats have struggled to implement their agenda.

It’s time to adopt paid parental leave as a right.

A new way to think about the American Revolution.

Patent medicine used to be associated with fraud and profiteering. What shifted the industry's positions on medical ethics and intellectual property?

Why it's so important to remember even our ugliest and most racist chapters.

In 1850s Vermont, Achsa Sprague swore that the spirits who helped her walk again also possessed her with a crucial mission: freeing every soul in America.

Late 1960s conflicts within the armed forces produced efforts to educate service members on racism.

The debate over how to teach the history of race in the U.S. is entangling local school boards and engulfing national politics.

How much did slave owners pay for antebellum-era policies from Aetna, AIG, and New York Life?

The veneration of the Constitution is directly connected to America’s emergence as global hegemon.

The perils of turning the plaintiff in Roe v. Wade into a political symbol.

A new book challenges the notion that independent inventors were shunted aside in the 20th century by anonymous scientists in corporate research laboratories.

A digital exhibit on the history and legacy of the canal.

From My Lai to Desert Storm to WMDs.

Colonial America was divided over smallpox inoculation, but he championed science to skeptic.

On the history (and future) of class struggle in America.