Excerpts

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.

How today's protests are struggling to reclaim the vision of the great abolitionist leader.

Ida B. Wells reported on lynching in the South, risking her own safety.

A cat named Miss Pussy! A racist parrot! Benjamin Harrison’s possums, which he later ate!

Jacob Lawrence was one of twentieth-century America’s most celebrated black artists.

What if chairs could shift our state of consciousness, transporting the imagination into distant landscapes and ecstatic experiences, both religious and erotic?

The Mic-O-Say was founded in 1925, under the leadership of Harold Roe Bartle, a two-term Kansas City mayor known in his social circles as ‘Chief.’

The Super Bowl might be a capitalist bonanza — but its creation was the ultimate socialist act.

The Vaudeville star was at the height of her fame in Europe when WWII struck, and used her status for the allies.

Joel Rhone reviews Eddie Glaude Jr.’s Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and its Urgent Lessons for Our Own

Allen Barra reviews Mark Kram Jr.’s Smokin’ Joe, a biography of Joe Frazier.

An abstract expressionist and master of collage, an intellectual and outspoken activist, Bearden evolved as much as his times did.

A review of "Set The Night on Fire", an inspiring book that points to a new generation of activists who remain unbowed by conservative historiographies.

In 1969, an activist set out to build an African-American metropolis from scratch. What would have happened if Soul City had succeeded?

The acclaimed reformer stoked the white, middle-class feminist movement and brought critical understanding to a “problem that had no name”

Sixty years ago, many GOP leaders resisted radicals in their ranks. Now they’re not even trying.

Such women have long pushed American politics to the right, and their ideas have become mainstream.

From poisoned monks and nuclear bombs to the “transfermium wars,” mapping the atomic world hasn’t been easy.

By making health care broadly available, the government helps ensure our freedom.

But it probably won’t be the savior some expect.