Excerpts

What haunts the land? When two artists dig up the tangled history of slavery and soil exhaustion in Maryland, soil memory reveals ongoing racial violence.

His blazing rendition at Woodstock still echoes throughout the years, reminding us of what is worth fighting for in the American experiment.

The Biden administration’s proposed “child allowances” draw on the feminist thought of Crystal Eastman, who advocated “motherhood endowments” 100 years ago.

Martha Saxton dives into the life of the mother of George Washington and how historians have misrepresented her in the past.

Understanding how inflation came to be a mainstay in modern economics.

A look at the evolution of the prison system in California.

At E. 38th Street and Chicago Avenue in Minneapolis, a self-organizing network explores what it means to construct and maintain a public memorial.

A new book recovers long-suppressed alternative politics.

The story of one small Maryland town that became the Marriage Capital of the East Coast in the 20th century.

Why the rifles jammed.

Patsy Sims reflects on her interview with the man who was instrumental in the death of three black men in Mississippi.

Before it was embraced by men, the union suit, or 'emancipation suit,' was worn by women pushing for dress reform.

Are cemeteries the right place to put Confederate statues and memorials being removed from court houses and town squares across the South?

You must always caulk the wagon. Never ford the river.

How a minister's accidental bestseller launched the country's first outdoor craze.

Not long ago, life-saving medical know-how was viewed as belonging to everyone. What happened?

Social networks existed long before the invention of social media.

A century after the Tulsa Race Massacre, what happened there is finally more widely known—but other "Black Wall Street" stories remain hidden.

Once a means of survival, and then an exploitative spectacle, the sport can also embody a synergy with a top predator in Florida’s changing landscape.

Two pioneering Black writers have not received the recognition they deserve for chronicling one of the country’s gravest crimes.

Campus police forces developed as part of an effort to wall off universities from Black neighborhoods.

A Pulitzer Prize winner punches down.

In her new book, Colley shows how written constitutions developed both as a way to further justify rulers and to turn rebellions into legitimate governments.

Omar ibn Said was captured in Senegal at 37 and enslaved in Charleston. A devout Muslim, he later converted to the Christian faith of his enslavers. Or did he?

Most Black Tulsans in 1921 were working class. But these days, it seems like the fate of those few blocks in and around “Black Wall Street” is all that matters.

How the late 19th century’s raucous party system gave way to a sedate and exclusionary political culture that erected more and more barriers to participation.

Why did the American Revolution succeed while other revolutions in the same time period did not?

Black educators have always known that their students are living in an anti-Black world and that their teaching must be set against the order of that world.

The field of political consulting was unknown before Leone Baxter and Clem Whitaker founded Campaigns, Inc., in 1933.

Johnny Cash's life in a collectivist colony during the Great Depression.

A new biography details the cultural jumble of literature, dirty jokes, and everything in between that went into the making of the foremost self-made American.

Slavery and the Civil War were central to the development of photography as both a technology and an art.

The property values of the popular game reflect a legacy of racism and inequality.

The alcohol epidemic devastated Native American communities, leading to crippling poverty, high mortality rates — and a successful sobriety movement.

A new exhibition celebrates the work of three Austrian artists who escaped their country as Nazis took over and created daring work in the years after.

A section of D.C.’s Congressional Cemetery has become a gathering place for honoring LGBT activists.

A conversation with Richard Jean So about combining data and literary analysis to understand how the publishing industry came to be dominated by white writers. 

In May 1921, President Harding paid tribute to a ship carrying 5,000 fallen Americans returned for burial.

How we sit isn’t the only thing midcentury modernism sought to control.

What do we know about the history of these designs? Who was buying this furniture when modernism was new, and why?

Building large memorials to display power and dominance, the US government hoped to inspire Judeo-Christian and capitalist ideals with their cemeteries.

How anti-homosexual policies throughout military history helped shape gay culture today.

Sasha Geffen’s debut book reveals that the history of pop music is a history of gender rebellion.

Ever look at the tome on a coffee table and wonder why coffee table books are a thing? Consider this brief history of coffee table books.

For decades, policymakers have debated who may access public education and the social safety net.

Is Phil Collins's legendary collection everything it's cracked up to be?

A comprehensive digital archive, map, and timeline of riots and lynchings across the U.S. in 1919.

Several recent books offer a more complete, bottom-up picture of the role sailors and Black political actors played in making the Atlantic world.

What are Latin American ideas about race, and how have they been formed in relation to the U.S. and vice versa?

Fossil Cycad National Monument held America's richest deposit of petrified cycadeoid plants, until it didn't.