Excerpts

Curated stories from around the web.
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Peace protester, wearing keffiyeh and holding sign reading "STOP" with red handprint.

McCarthyism Is Alive and Well With the “Nonprofit Killer” Bill

Today’s legislative efforts against the Palestine solidarity movement bear a striking resemblance to McCarthyism in both tactics and ideology.
Harper Lee

Harper Lee's Only Recorded Interview About 'To Kill A Mockingbird' [AUDIO]

In 1964, Harper Lee talked with WQXR host Roy Newquist for an interview in New York.
Members of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.

Feminism's Forgotten Free-Trade Past

Jane Addams and the interwar women’s peace movement: feminist contributions to international relations.
A drawing of a Viking ship approaching Greenland.

The Long Struggle for Greenland

Throughout its history, the vast Arctic island has been viewed by competing powers as a strategic prize and geopolitical asset.
Anita Bryant speaking at microphone.

She Launched the Modern Antigay Movement in America. It Worked—Just Not as She Intended.

Anita Bryant’s legacy is not what she hoped—but her destructive message lives on.
Faneuil Hall in Boston at night.

Why Faneuil Hall Is a Metaphor for the American Revolution’s Complicated Definition of Liberty

How a lively market on Boston Harbor became part of many defining moments of the Colonial and Revolutionary eras.
Damaged glass negative showing children looking at the U.S. Constitution, 1920.
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A Nation Is a Living Thing

In the 1920s, many in the U.S. fought for a living Constitution. Plenty of others wanted it dead.
Drawing of the first five presidents.

When Presidents Sent Handwritten Lists of Their Nominees to the Senate

The U.S. faces the likelihood of a bruising and raucous set of confirmation hearings — a clear break from the cooperative system the founders established.
Drawing of the Constitutional Convention, by John W. Winkler.
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Strange Political Bedfellows

The origins of the Electoral College are entwined with slavery, but not in the way that recent accounts have suggested.
A stuffed bear in a room of empty children's beds at Willowbrook Hospital.

The Horrors of Hepatitis Research

The abusive experiments on mentally disabled children at Willowbrook State School were only one part of a much larger unethical research program.
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Knight Club

Were the Knights of the Golden Circle responsible for Lincoln’s assassination? No one knows, but far-right secret societies always draw power from speculation.
John B. Calhoun and his rats from a 1970 photograph.
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Rats Are as Bad as Human Beings in Some Ways

In which John B. Calhoun begins to study the lifestyles of rodents, and the public listens.
Two newspaper workers flip a first proof of a page off the printing press at the offices of the Daily Mail, 1944.
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Perhaps the Most Influential Single Propagandist for Fascism

On the lengths newspaper publishers took to reach new subscribers — and then drive them away — in the 1930s.
Henry Ford

Ford and the Führer

Ford Motor Company claims its Cologne plant was confiscated by Nazis, but newly discovered documents and correspondence prove otherwise.

Hail Mary

In the 1970s, some athletes began questioning the alliance between sports, conservative Christianity, and politics.
The COVID virus as the desert sun.

How Covid Shaped Climate Policy

Five years from the emergence of the disease, the world — and the climate — is still grappling with its effects.
Kendrick Lamar in the spotlight performing a concert.

Bad Beef

Rap beef is form of capitalist accumulation that enriches artists—and, most of all, the corporate suits that run their record labels.
Street signs on the corner of Rosa L. Parks Avenue and North Jeff Davis Avenue.

Atlas of Southern Memory

An interactive map of public commemoration of the Civil War and the civil rights movement in the South.
Trad wife dresses in six different colors.

My Babies Are Richer Than Yours: On the Lie of the Online Tradwife

A new theory of the leisure class influencer.
Newborn babies sleeping in a maternity ward.

The Coming Assault on Birthright Citizenship

The Constitution is absolutely clear on this point, but will that matter?
Traffic signs pointing left and right, blurred as if they were spinning.

“Populism” and the Significance of Left and Right

In the United States, the Populist tradition has always defined left-wing and egalitarian politics, unfairly maligned by bosses and intellectuals alike.
Family tree

Your Family: Past, Present, and Future

The past, present, and future of your family tree are all far more fascinating than you realize.

How Jukeboxes Made Memphis Music

When R.E. Buster Williams ruled jukeboxes and jukeboxes ruled music.
"I Baptize Thee," 1940 oil on burlap painting of a baptism.

How Memphis Gave Gospel the Holy Ghost

On the evening of October 7, 1952, gospel promoters booked the Spirit of Memphis for a concert in Memphis’s Mason Temple.
Leonardo Dicaprio in "Titanic."

Which Celebrities Popularized (or Tarnished) Baby Names? A Statistical Analysis

Which public figures impacted baby naming trends?
A painting of a large camera on a film set, surrounded by green screens.

Casual Viewing

Why Netflix looks like that.
Photograph of Drag stars: Lady Bunny, Misstress Formika, Sweetie, Anna Conda, Tabboo!

A Nearly Complete Oral History of the Pyramid Club

The Pyramid Club is the stuff of downtown New York legend. In the 1980s, a tiny little dive bar became ground zero for the exploding New York drag scene.
Spock and Kirk in a scene from Star Trek.

Star Trek’s Cold War

While America was fighting on the ground, the Federation was fighting in space.
Protestors after Nixon's Election protesting the end to war.

US Labor and the Gaza War: Historical Perspective

Are we doomed to repetition? It’s something I worry about.
A line of workmen drilling.

A Prison the Size of the State, A Police to Control the World

Two new books examine how colonial logic has long been embedded within US carceral systems.
Neighborhood residents stand in front of a 25th anniversary protest mural outside the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India.

The Worst Industrial Disaster in the History of the World

For the people of Old Bhopal, an accident there had sent forty metric tons of methyl isocyanate into a runaway reaction that released a toxic gas.
‘Two girls at Bamberg led to the stake, 1550’; etching by Jan Luyken from the 1685 edition of Thieleman van Braght’s The Bloody Theater, or Martyrs Mirror of the Defenseless Christians.

Dispirited Away

The rise and fall of an evangelical church, founded with progressive intentions and undone by dissension and bad faith.
Karen Silkwood.

Whistleblower Karen Silkwood’s Urgent Message for Us

Karen Silkwood death and smear campaign highlights how retaliation against whistleblowers deflects scrutiny from power by targeting the messenger.
Photo of Wong Kim Ark and document about Chinese Exclusion.

History’s Lessons on Anti-Immigrant Extremism

Even Trump’s recent assertion that he would use executive action to abolish birthright citizenship has a historical link to the Chinese American experience.
Former President Jimmy Carter speaking to the congregation at Maranatha Baptist Church before teaching Sunday school in 2019.

Jimmy Carter’s Most Perplexing Legacy

For all of his personal Christian devotion, he could not capture the hearts of white evangelicals.
A group of three abolitonists standing in front of a man holding a bag of money and brandishing a chair as a weapon, with the caption "The Disappointed Abolitionists."

The Tedious Heroism of David Ruggles

History also changes because of strange, flawed, deeply human people doing unremarkable, tedious, and often boring work.
Reenactors working with performance artist Dread Scott in 2019 retrace the route of an 1811 rebellion of enslaved people in Louisiana.

My Gun Culture Is Not Your Gun Culture

In Black Southern life, guns have been a sign of readiness against constant threats.
Lyndon B. Johnson and Lady Bird Johnson visit the Fletcher family in Inez, Kentucky, in 1964.

Who’s to Blame for White Poverty?

Dismantling it requires getting the story right.
Together with McGovern image of several diverse individuals smiling on a magazine like image.

A Political Education

Ray Schoenke started campaigning for George McGovern in 1971 because he wanted to make a difference. The experience ended up changing his life.
A row of nuclear missiles aimed at a cloudy sky.

The Forgotten Epidemic

The bishops once used their influence to encourage nuclear disarmament. Can they do so again now?
Richard Pryor.

Understanding Richard Pryor's Use of the N-Word

Pryor's use of the word represented something valiant.
Bob Dylan smoking a cigarette with his arms around Mimi Farina.

Bob Dylan and the Creative Leap that Transformed Modern Music

Bob Dylan decided he wanted to subvert the expectations of his fans – and rebel against industry forces intent on pigeonholing him and his work.
A cartoon depicting Charles Guiteau.

Echoes of Rage

Our new age of violence looks a lot like the Gilded Age.
The Griffith Observatory, constructed by the Works Progress Administration, on a hill overlooking Los Angeles.

A New Deal for Architecture

What it conveys is quite specific: grandeur, beauty, dynamism, and power.
William F. Buckley, Donald Trump.

The Modern Conservative Tradition and the Origins of Trumpism

Today’s Trumpist radicals are not (small-c) conservatives – but they stand in the continuity of Modern Conservatism’s defining political project.
Ballet dancers (all ages and genders)posing in christmas costumes.

How Christmas Became an All-American Holiday

What kind of Christmas did we used to know? To hear some critics and historians tell it, the holiday used to be a lot more religious than it is now.
Image of classified documents and Russia and US leaders shaking hands.

A Newly Declassified Memo Sheds Light on America’s Post-Cold War Mistakes

This remarkably prescient document holds several lessons about how to run foreign policy.
The American flag and the South Korean flag.

Eighty Years of Martial Law

South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol’s declaration of martial law is of little import compared to the American occupation of the country.
David Rubenstein

King David

Carlyle Group founder David Rubenstein has cultivated a reputation as a well-meaning advocate of history education. What does that image mask?
Harry Truman holding a register to vote sign with three other men.

Politics Is Personal

The 1946 elections were a disaster for Democrats—and the reason I was born.
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