Excerpts

Marcy Sacks compares the increased desire for animal companions during the Civil War and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Seventy years after the civil preparedness film Duck and Cover, it's long past time to reckon with the way white supremacy shaped U.S. nuclear defense efforts.

The great bonfires of Gallows Hill—and what they tell us about America.

The famed economist’s theories were embraced by Beltway power brokers in both parties. Finally, a Democratic president is turning the page on a legacy of ruin.

By thinking of diseases just as medical problems, we allow them to fester in poor communities.

The 19th-century antecedent to today’s complaints of labor shortage.

Chronicling the policing of gay life in the mid-20th century.

While researching the history of racism in Silicon Valley, Lisa Nakamura is surprised to discover the Navajo Nation's role in the creation of the tech industry.

A landscape architect of the 1950s predicted that lady drivers would want pastel-colored pavement on the interstate.

On the intersectionality of enslaved women and common misunderstandings about slavery.

Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and Jason Stanford on the making of a misrepresented narrative.

Tens of thousands of mutual aid networks and projects emerged around the world in 2020. They have long been a tool for marginalized groups.

Why did readers search for deeper meaning in the adventures of Snoopy and the gang?

W.E.B. DuBois, 100 years ago.

Photographer Andrew Feiler documented how the educational institutions shaped a generation of black leaders.

Hyphenation became a complex issue of identity, assimilation, and xenophobia amid anti-immigration movements at the turn of the twentieth century.

The White press helped destroy democracy in the South. Black journalists developed an activist tradition because they had to.

A new edition of Emily Dickinson’s Master letters highlights what remains blazingly intense and mysterious in her work.

How African Americans came to Indian Territory after the Civil War.

Upon discovering that her mother had been a member of the group Women Strike For Peace (WSP), Heidi Hutner becomes obsessed with feminist nuclear history.

For many of us, especially those who weren’t alive when it happened, we’re all watching that event through Zapruder’s lens.

On the Shakers and Catholics who found love and friendship in early America.

The rise of liberal religion in the United States.

In the 1800s, they helped lay the groundwork for the anti-vaccine movement.

Today, we can learn a lot from the popularizing efforts that led to that consensus that Keynesianism leads to and long-lasting economic success.

That tradition of finding partners in the face of social isolation persists today.

After inheriting a box of documents from her grandfather, Marta Olmos learns more about her family's history.

Today’s special education system was shaped five decades ago, when parents fought for disabled children’s right to learn.

Karlos K. Hill investigates the disturbing photographic legacy of the Tulsa massacre and the resilience of Black Wall Street’s residents.

A story about the hidden burial grounds of Louisiana’s enslaved people, and how continued industrial development is putting the historic sites at risk.

The story of the first major black-owned record label and the mystery behind the man who created it.

A new book recovers the reputation Poe had in his own lifetime of being a cross between a science writer, a poet, and a man of letters.

How a spy came to be buried in San Francisco is a forgotten tale of adventure, intrigue, and tragedy.

Grieving family members were instrumental in the creation of a federal program to rebury and repatriate the remains of fallen soldiers after World War II.

If a Pulitzer-nominated 34-part series of investigative journalism can vanish from the web, anything can.

Researching the history of time capsules.

How we perceive the senses changes in different historical, political, and cultural contexts. Sensory historians ask what people smelled, touched and tasted.

Mabel Wilson discusses the history of racial violence and the continued vandalism and destruction of Black historical memorials in the Deep South.

The short life and long legacy of the 19th-century reformer William Apess.

An 80-by-10 grid punched into a paper card helped drive us out of the Industrial Age and into the Data Age.

Some of the earliest and most powerful anti-war songs of the Sixties era don’t mention Vietnam, but rather World War I.

Before universities profited from stolen Indigenous territory through "land-grants," schools like UNC sold Indigenous lands hundreds of miles away.

Back when most people made their clothes, one swatch could carry many stories.

A decade before Lewis and Clark, André Michaux wanted to explore the American continent. Spying for France gave him that chance.

"Virginia Arcadia: The Natural Bridge in American Art,” at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, surveys the arch as icon and propaganda.

19th century Hawai‘i attracted traders, entrepreneurs, and capitalists, who displaced, a flourishing and elaborate culture.

Since the 19th century, men have served as gatekeepers in the entertainment industry, controlling women’s careers.

Career ranger Virgil "Bus" Carrell had no design training, but "really gave a damn," say experts, about his lasting legacy.

The new agreement echoes the original 1941 version, but mentions human rights and dignity explicitly, envisioning them as a starting point for the world order.

In the six decades of his career, Bob Dylan has mined America’s past for images, characters, and events that speak to the nation’s turbulent present.