Excerpts

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

Across the history of the U.S. abortion-rights movement, it has also been a matter of equality.

For decades, Houston families like mine have helped keep the flame of independence burning.

LGBTQ voters overwhelmingly went for Harris, but the idea that gay voters are always going to be solidly blue is a myth.

Am 1884 guide to vice and crime by the founder of the world’s largest private detective agency.

What is an apology from the President of the United States worth if reparations do not include cessation of settler colonial violence?

Private insurance companies have long dominated the provision of social security in the United States, but resistance is growing.

Ideas about history still prevailing in the liberal resistance to Trump keep pushing us backward.

James Graham Wilson makes a compelling case that the under-celebrated example of Paul Nitze is both instructive and worthy of our emulation.

The Southern Baptist Convention’s oldest, most direct ties to the Holy Land were established by a Palestinian Arab.

A new book revamps Newark's reputation as unsexy, violent, destitute, defiantly declaring it “a place of desire, love, eroticism, community, and resistance.”

The ideas he popularized will continue to shape evangelicalism for generations to come.

On both sides of the color line, to own one’s home remains synonymous with freedom—even as real estate has proven itself to be relentlessly unequal.

Using film and advertising to sell capitalism and nationalism to immigrants in the early 20th century.

Purposely brutalizing psychological experiments may have confirmed Theodore Kaczynski’s still-forming belief in the evil of science while he was in college.

The Northeast caught fire this fall, in a way that recalls its past. History has some lessons about how to manage the region’s fire seasons to come.

Susie Orbach’s 1978 book is a fascinating snapshot of diet and physical culture in a very different era.

A recent Otis Redding biography examines what was and what could have been, 50 years after tragedy struck.

For more than a century, the American government has surveilled and harassed activists from marginalized communities.

At universities, American Marxism has led to good scholarship, but it’s also encouraged hyper-specialization and the use of impenetrable jargon.

Once again, the crematorium sits silent.

On the rise of the narcotic farm model, a radical reimagining of the nation’s approach to addiction.

One plantation tourist manager said covering slavery would be like “trying to tell the story at Disneyland of how poorly the employees at Disney are treated.”

The popular way to keep warm outdoors owes a debt to World War II–era clothing science.

When the future arrived, it felt…ordinary. What happened to the glamour of tomorrow?

Women abolitionists held annual Christmas bazaars to raise money for the cause; these fairs sold everything from needlework to books to Parisian dresses.

When polarization lacks clear consequences, Americans are left with "a grin without a cat: a politics with only weak policy influence or institutional ties."

Starting with Obama, American presidents embraced the idea of arresting China’s rise, opening the door to Trump’s trade wars and hawkishness.

Commentary on America’s 40th president often misses how the Gipper blended principles and pragmatism for a truly conservative statesmanship.

Defenses of the recent killing of Jordan Neely suggest that the film’s reactionary, Wild West–style vigilante violence still holds the imagination of many.

America's public schools were founded on the ideal of uniting rich and poor, but inequality persists due to racial, income, and systemic divides.

Many of us do not go gentle into that good night.

Women anthropologists, face assault in the field, exposing victim blaming, institutional failures, and ethical gaps in academia.

The decline of Southern industries paved the way for plantations in Fiji and Australia, where victims of “blackbirding” endured horrific working conditions.

If you want a clear strategy for winning wars, don’t play a semantic game with the name of the department that’s charged with the strategy’s execution.

Rankin's 'Letters on American Slavery' set out a moral argument for abolition that resonated across the nation.

Christine Jorgensen and the birth of trans bathroom panic.

A 1940s child nutrition program has been a subject of debate for decades, reflecting shifting political priorities.

Faith’s pivotal role in the outcome of the Civil War.

How politicians used the story of one young patient to neglect the AIDS crisis.

Rains of blood and frogs, mysterious disappearances, objects in the sky: these were the anomalies that fascinated Charles Fort in his Book of the Damned.

There are uncanny parallels between the elections of 2024 and 1856, with one big exception: in 1856, it was the political left that was on the offensive.

California’s approach to Black reparations shifts toward land access, ownership and stewardship.

The surprising influence of premillennial eschatology on American culture.

The hero worship of the family of American royalty has a dark side: a tendency toward conspiracism that fits with the MAGA movement.

When dancer Loïe Fuller’s spinning garment reflected the stage lights, it took on a life of its own, beguiling those in New York, Berlin, and Paris.

Gladiator and Gladiator II have little to do with the Roman past. But they have a great deal to do with the American present.

Why rock overtook every other genre to define our understanding of America at war.

A new Smithsonian book reckons with the enduring legacies of slavery and capitalism.

The decline of South Carolina's apple industry, interwoven with personal memories of family orchards.