Excerpts

A breakdown of how Woody Guthrie's hit song "This Land" has evolved over time.

For decades, historians believed that the Department's files had been lost forever. Now copies of those files are available in this searchable digital archive.

Since the 19th century, women have abandoned restrictive undergarments while pursuing social and political freedom.

Robert Nisbet predicted the managerialism that has brought universities low. But he also saw a way out.

History books remember Yorktown as a "victory for the right of self-determination." But the battle guaranteed slavery for nearly another century.

The human rights activist and former sharecropper once said that “you are not free whether you are white or black, until I am free.”

Native Americans’ warnings of environmental catastrophe inspired the landscape of “Dune.” Now their tribal lands are flooding.

Civil War veterans could be unmanned by drinking too much, and their service did not insulate them from postwar blights on their manhood.

The “peaceful revolution” of rural electrification.

The right’s facile comparisons of the two presidents miss the vastly different circumstances facing Biden and distort Carter’s record.

In “The Loneliest Americans,” Jay Caspian Kang asks whether Asian American identity can be rescued from people like him.

Long buried, the 1871 Chinese Massacre surfaces amid a significant anniversary and a new wave of violence.

And why stopping the subsidies can help bring it back.

Tree ring evidence of an ancient solar storm enables scientists to pinpoint the exact year of Norse settlement.

Republicans in Texas, and indeed around the country, remain hell-bent on going back to the future.

We keep trying to assess schools quantitatively instead of grappling with some deeper problems.

The Haitian migrant crisis is the latest stage in a decades-long legacy of mistreatment by the U.S. government, much of which unfolded at Cuban detention facilities.

They believed that wealth should have no bearing on a citizen’s voting power.

We say we’re for it. We’ve never truly had it. These next few years will determine its fate.

America, you’ve got the dates wrong. Your intense debate over which year marks the real beginning of the United States—1619 (slavery’s arrival) or 1776.

Across party lines, Americans actually agree on teaching “divisive concepts.”

How a grassroots movement of farmers laid the foundation for state intervention in the economy, challenging the slaveholding South.

The resurgence of the wild rice harvest seeks to tells the story of settler colonialism, tribal kinship and ecological stewardship.

Americans don't need to rely on legends to tell the stories of women in the Revolution.

Maritime workers who were basically kidnapped into the British Royal Navy were a key force in the War of Independence.

Let’s remember that performative anti-racism is as profitable politically as racism has been.

From boomers to zoomers, the concept gets social history all wrong.

From drowning to murders to the mental toll of isolation, these stoic towers carry a full share of tragedy.

The U.S. needs another innovation dream team.

In the 19th century, freedom from government interference mapped onto opposition of women's rights.

The NPS is working with Cayuse historians and students to correct a historical lie that shaped the West.

While our perceptions of grandparents have remained static, we've asked them to do a lot more.

In the 1960s and 1970s, photographer Leni Sinclair stood at the center of a local scene where political and cultural ferment merged.

Emily Bass on foreign aid and America's response to long-standing pandemics.

For eight years, a man without a memory lived among strangers at a hospital in Mississippi. But was recovering his identity the happy ending he was looking for?

The omnipresence of slavery at historic sites today seems intended to tarnish remarkable achievements and promote the cause of identity politics.

Land acknowledgments stating that activities are taking place on land previously owned by Indigenous peoples are popular. But they may do more harm than good.

Fifty years ago, Disney World's celebrated opening promised joy and inspiration to all; today the theme park is reckoning with its white middle-class past.

A review of "Cruising for Conspirators: How a New Orleans DA Prosecuted the Kennedy Assassination as a Sex Crime."

The debate regarding which Bible kids should read in school was about whether Catholic immigrants should have the full rights of American citizenship.

The economist, along with David Card, was instrumental in changing America’s mind about the minimum wage.

Even when the president’s party passes historic legislation, voters don’t seem to care.

For political reasons, powerful people don’t want the country to pay its bills. History shows all that could go wrong.

For decades, dramatized plot lines about unwanted and unexpected pregnancies helped create our real-world abortion discourse.

The game that launched today’s massive video game industry was not a roaring success. The oft-told story of why turns out to be off the mark.

How New Yorkers trying to ward off catastrophe paved the road to the privatized city.

One bank's desperation and a state's economic needs undermined regulations protecting consumers.

May Ngai uses her experiences as an activist in the 1980s and her research on the 19th century Chinese diaspora to debunk stereotypes about Chinese Americans.

The Young Lords took over Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx on July 14, 1970. Their demand? Accessible, quality health care for all.

In 1992, thousands of drunken cops raged against the mayor of New York — leaving an indelible mark on the city’s likely next mayor.