Excerpts

The 1968 Gun Control Act had the right idea — but it came too late.

The fate of Aaron Burr's daughter remains a topic of contention.

A 1918 debate offers a portrait of the challenges facing local officials during a health emergency.

Richard Russell was a segregationist and a fervent opponent of civil rights. So why does his name still adorn the Russell Senate Office Building?

Globalism is out. Nationalism is in. Progressives who think they can jump aboard are dangerously naive.

Roger Mudd proved in 1964 that media attention can help overcome Senate obstruction.

In 1948, the landfill at Fresh Kills was marketed to Staten Island as a stopgap measure. No one guessed that it would remain open for more than half a century.

At the end of the nineteenth century, a wave of women rethought what journalism could say, sound like, and do. Why were they forgotten?

Non-fungible tokens and artificial intelligence make tracing the origins of a digital object more fragile. What are the world’s archivists to do?

In 1911, the Dillingham Commission set a half-century precedent for screening out 'undesirable' newcomers.

The Founders terrorized and exterminated Native Americans instead of learning from them.

While the Panthers have become a staple of pop culture, veteran members of the group remain invisible.

A century of failed liberal attempts at policing reform in Minneapolis suggests that none of the city’s current proposals will prevent another George Floyd.

The path to equality in the free Northern states was inconceivably steep. But in time, the movement maneuvered from the margins into mainstream politics.

When professor Norman E. Himes published The Medical History of Contraception in 1936, he had made a tactical move, to legalize birth control.

Until the Covid-19 pandemic, the catastrophe of the Spanish flu had been dropped from American memory.

History suggests that a more discreet American presence in Afghanistan will be a provocation rather than a source of security.

A new book presents an expansive vision of soul music.

The Cold War may be over, but an arms race continues, even as safeguards once in place have fallen away.

It's worth considering how the two images of the beaver – one focused upon its hind parts and the other upon its industry – are but two acts in a single history.

The Amazon CEO's vision of space settlements draws on 1970s thinking, without adding anything new.

Undocumented Black migrants struggle to have their asylum rights recognized in the United States. Groups have been asking President Biden to stop deportations.

For the great American poet, the peculiar qualities of grass suggested a way to resolve the tension between the individual and the group.

Orisanmi Burton reflects on the legacy of the Panther 21 on the 50th anniversary (to the day) of their acquittal.

When germ theory displaced the idea of "miasmas" we lost important knowledge about tackling airborne disease.

The domestic slave trade was no sideshow in our history, and slave traders were not bit players on the stage.

A group of activists is calling attention to the legacy of slavery encoded in the names of New York City’s streets and neighborhoods.

Conservatives have weaponized Americans’ desire to help to attack the social safety net.

Lady Bird Johnson and Nancy Reagan grappled with the contradictions of a role that is at once public and private, superficial and serious.

Joe Biden has met with scholars to discuss his presidency and likely legacy—but what are we to make of his special relationship with historian Jon Meacham?

Family blessings are a curse, or they can be. The life of Henry Adams explained in his book Education.

In 1970, an image of a dead protester at Kent State became iconic. But what happened to the 14-year-old kneeling next to him?

A new book tackles the deep and persistent American intellectual tradition we might call Science-hesitant.

The inside story of Mayday 1971 and the largest mass arrest in US history.

"The Dead are Arising" may be the best Malcolm X biography yet. But its author seems unsure of how to write about a religion outside the American mainstream.

Patrick Blanchfield tracks the long-standing entanglement of guns and religion in the United States. Part 1 of 2.

Thomas Paine, the most radical of American revolutionaries, perhaps most fully understood the millennial potential of the new Republic.

His posthumously released novel, “The Man Who Lived Underground,” was written during a crisis of political faith.

History must be acknowledged before justice can be done.

If we don’t understand the history of Asian exclusion, we cannot understand the racist hatred of the present.

Immigration has been a defining issue in a campaign before, and the consequences transformed the Democratic Party.

Bill Clinton’s 1996 welfare reform was supposed to move needy families off government handouts and onto a path out of poverty. How has it turned out?

Colin Kaepernick continues a long tradition of athletes using their celebrity to protest America's racial inequality.

A case from almost a decade ago reveals the peril faced by whistleblowers seeking to expose wrongdoing.

From the 1930s to the 1950s a radical surgery — the lobotomy — would forever change our understanding and treatment of the mentally ill.

Today, despite their mixed record, private prison companies are overseeing the vast majority of undocumented migrants.

In the 1990s, a handful of researchers inspired panic with a dire but flawed prediction: the imminent arrival of a new breed of “superpredators.”

Unfair maneuver or a strong warning to would-be criminals?

Stella Liebeck was vilified when she was awarded millions after spilling McDonald's coffee in her lap. But the facts told another story.

Anger over policing and inequality boiled over more than 50 years ago, and a landmark report warned that it could happen again.