Excerpts

"No one story can completely explain Annie."

A look at how the word, a surprisingly recent addition to the English lexicon, made its way into the dictionary.

Remembering the woman who outsang Ray Charles.

Since its emergence in the middle of the twentieth century, the American Empire has been fueled by the search for an enemy.

A reduction in public housing units left Americans at the mercy of private landlords.

One idea inherited from 1960s radicalism is that of “white privilege,” a protean concept invoked to explain wealth, political power, and even cognition.

The border blurred the stark dividing line between white and black in America, something that Americans like William Ellis used to their advantage.

It’s not obsolete, and it’s not a business.

How a legacy of violent nationalism haunts the republic in the age of Trump.

Images from a century ago of people doing their best to keep others and themselves safe.

An empire built on the backs and blood of enslaved Africans.

The role of Black churches in the Reconstruction of the United States.

A post-9/11 veteran novelist explores a post-Vietnam literary soiree gone bad, and finds timeless lessons about a contentious and still-evolving genre.

A review of "You Talkin’ to Me? The Unruly History of New York English."

South Dakota has been called "the Mississippi of the North" for its long history of making voting hard for Native Americans.

More than a century later, they’re still paying the price.

For close to a century, conservatives have seen all government programs as the road to socialism.

Historians' prohibition on 'presentism' crumbles under the weight of events.

Why secession, separatism, and disunion are the most American of values.

Using history to guide us in the difficult present.

How two competing definitions of the idea evolved over 250 years—and why they remain largely irreconcilable.

The story of James Rivington, the publisher who got on the wrong side of the Sons of Liberty.

Behind the friendship was a more complicated relationship, which now drives the former vice president to prove his partner wrong.

It wasn’t a culminating moment, but the start of a new fight to secure voting rights for all Americans.

Reform was framed as a way of removing “politics” from postal affairs and giving more autonomy to postal management. In time, it would prove to do neither.

The 1850 novel reveals disturbing continuities between the 19th century cholera pandemics and global health crises today.

How the myth of a liberal North erases a long history of white violence.

Even housing policies that sought to create more Black homeowners were stymied by racism and a determination to shrink the government’s presence.

In 1920, like 2020, race became the pivot of a historic turning point.

Choosing a running mate used to be more about campaigning than governing. But after Richard Nixon’s ruinous relationship with Spiro Agnew, the job has changed.

Have historians of the conservative movement focused too much on its intellectuals?

The Great Emancipator's character and anti-slavery legacy has been questioned by Black Americans for over a century.

What the long history of the autonomous vehicle reveals about its fast-approaching future.

Clinton disparaged Carmichael at John Lewis’s funeral. But Black radicalism speaks more to the present moment than Clinton’s centrist politics.

A white man of the Jim Crow South, he couldn’t escape the burden of race, yet derived creative force from it.

Monsters have always patrolled the margins of the map. By their very strangeness, they determined the boundaries of the regular world.

Tomboys and the endless privileges accorded to white girls.

In 1952, the newspaper publisher and activist joined a long-shot bid by the Progressive Party, paving the way for politicians like Harris.

Will coronavirus prompt the house of cards of college athletics to come tumbling down?

Examining the life of Father Divine, the black preacher who called for the destruction of racial separation and claimed to be God.

There is, and always has been, a vanishingly thin line between charismatic democratic rulers and charismatic authoritarians.

For the warriors and wanderers who became the Aztec people, truth was not singular and history was braided from many voices.

Why Americans rejected educating only the children of the wealthy.

A century after the passage of the 19th Amendment, women with felony convictions remain disenfranchised.

An interview with historian Charles B. Dew.

Americans should not honor a revolt to uphold slavery with monuments or florid displays.

McCarthy never sent a single “subversive” to jail, but, decades later, the spirit of his conspiracy-mongering endures.

Republicans are replacing the public good with a far narrower definition of it.

Chicago has been a skunk haven for centuries.

The South’s mythology glamorized a noble defeat. Trump backers may do the same.