Excerpts

“Pseudoscience,” race, and American politics.

SWAT teams were created in the 1960s to combat violent events. Since then, the specialized teams have morphed into something very different.

Scientists explain how viruses, like Covid-19, spill over from animals to people, and what we must do to stop the next pandemic.

Some issues are too fundamental for a party to withstand, and the consequences can last for a generation.

How do some companies regain public trust after something goes seriously wrong, while others fail?

With many men 'missing' from the population in the aftermath of the 1918 flu, women stepped into public roles that hadn't previously been open to them.

Conservators are restoring a series of dioramas created for the 1940 American Negro Exposition, bringing their magical artistry, and stories, back to life.

In the 1950s, Harlem mother Mae Mallory fought a school system that she saw as 'just as Jim Crow' as the one she had attended in the South.

Three new books examine how the rise of coal, oil, and gas have permanently remade our world.

Since World War I we’ve been solving problems with dangerous chemicals that introduce new problems.

A new book shares a cautionary tale of the American surveillance state.

In 1971, armed officers went to a house occupied by Black Panther activists, marking a policing trajectory toward a more militarized response to Black activism.

The new crime thriller about a magnetic leader of the Black Panther Party is a sharp criticism of the FBI’s surveillance of social movements past and present.

Even so, many diseases have been tamed. Will Covid-19 be next?

Why I’ve made it my mission to teach others about Prince Hall.

As Presidents' Day approaches, historians look back at the most notable recent uses and misuses of "the Great Emancipator's" words.

When Alfred Winslow Jones created the hedge fund in 1949, the key to its approach was short sales, a practice the GameStop mess returned to public infamy.

Abraham Lincoln fought clinical depression all his life. But what would today be treated as a "character issue" gave Lincoln the tools to save the nation.

A comparative look at the U.S. and Peru's emancipation proclamations' nuances in declaring the freedom of enslaved peoples.

Cuddle up with your sweetie for stories about three centuries of pre-marital intimacy, from Puritan "bundling" to the back-seat of the parents' Buick.

On the aesthetics and history of the Freedman’s Memorial in Washington, D.C.

What the Civil War tells us about who has the power to shape history.

It used to be okay to admit that the world had simply become too much.

Emma Dabiri deconstructs colonial ideas of Blackness.

The neoclassical building was inspired by European shrines to imperial power.

The scandalous history of sex-ed movies.

For most of its history, monogamy was a rule only applied to married women.

A review of Robert Elder's new biography of John C. Calhoun.

“Come with me this morning to the church within our hearts, where the bells are always ringing, and the preacher whose name is Love — shall intercede for us!”

The city’s move to rename schools will provide invaluable ammunition to Fox News.

Presidential libraries are too important for historians to ignore.

An interview with Mary Pilon about her new book, ‘The Monopolists,’ which uncovers the real story about how Monopoly became the game it is today.

The inventor did not look for problems in need of solutions; he looked for solutions in need of modification.

Why did the historian come to fear the very movements he once would have celebrated?

Sentimental or “fancy” valentines, as they were called, were harbingers of hope, fondness, and desire.

A rally at Faneuil Hall in support of the Fourteenth Amendment and congressional investigation of southern disfranchisement.

King understood the perils of submerged racism.

Law enforcement and the urban-rural divide.

From Claudio Saunt's Cundill Prize-nominated "Unworthy Republic."

A man who wants everyone to know his views explains why he’s against voting in secret.

Failures inspire distrust of pollsters and calls for more shoe-leather reporting. But by the next election, we always come running back.

Winning the vote for women was a mighty struggle. Securing full liberation for women of color was no less daunting

Black abolitionist David Ruggles opened the first Black-owned bookstore in 1834, pointing the way to freedom—in more ways than one.

2020 was full of efforts to archive photos and artifacts of the pandemic — an impulse born of a sense of witnessing history, and a desire to speak to the future.

From Vincent Brown's Cundill Prize-nominated "Tacky’s Revolt."

“Start-ups: they need philosophers, political theorists, historians, poets. Critics.”

The United States’ unofficial anthem, a hymn of love of country.

For decades, a white woman’s memoir shaped our understanding of America’s first Black poet. Does a new book change the story?

The activist did not learn about her right to vote until she was 44, but once she did, she vigorously fought for black voting rights

The enduring lesson of American history is that the republic is always in danger when white supremacist sedition and violence escape justice.