Excerpts

Despite the Interior Department’s name, the agency has played a key role in the construction of American foreign policy and territorial expansion.

Nearly two centuries later, many tribes remain suspicious of the drive to get them vaccinated against the coronavirus.

Whereas southern Klansmen assaulted Black Americans and their white allies, western vigilantes targeted those they deemed a greater threat: Chinese immigrants.

History shows that the benefits of such a system can extend far beyond the venues into which such a passport would grant admission .

The U.S. is a diverse nation of immigrants—but it was not intended to be, and its historical biases continue to haunt the present.

Imported from Europe, the custom of leaving gratuities began spreading in the U.S. post-Civil War. It was loathed as a master-serf custom.

An interactive digital history project chronicling how the U.S. Post was the underlying circuitry of western expansion.

Digital messaging was supposed to make our work lives easier and more efficient, but the math suggests that meetings might be better.

Educators say that anti-Asian racism is directly linked to how the AAPI community is often depicted in U.S. history lessons .

A new book by Ruth Ben-Ghiat discusses the past and present challenges posed by authoritarianism, but misses the conditions in which it arises.

Cash transfers are an efficient response to the Covid-19 crisis, but UBI is a radical transformation of how states conceptualise and provide for people’s needs.

A review of "To Live and Defy in LA: How Gangsta Rap Changed America."

The history of the Crazy Woman Driver trope.

The history of the Atlantic slave trade after the American Revolution is a story of sustained efforts to suppress it even as demand for slaves increased.

Keen to appear outward-looking and open to Western culture, in 1838 the Second King of Siam bestowed upon his son a most unusual name.

In its original concept, the Appalachian Trail was a wildly ambitious plan to reorganize the economic geography of the eastern United States.

Stories of the places, the people, and the organizations that battled the American influenza epidemic of 1918-1919.

A huge expansion of the population of New Orleans created the perfect environment for the spread of yellow fever, and recent immigrants suffered most.

To inform its readers of a cholera epidemic, The New York Tribune published an ancestor to our current infographics.

Oy Bay! Become seasoned on the history of America's beloved spice blend.

How John and Jessie Frémont explored the frontiers of legend-making.

A look into Basque tree carvings in the Sierra Nevada mountains.

Acclimatization societies believed that animals could fill the gaps of a deficient environment.

The predigital dream of the audiobook.

Disease reshapes our lives in surprising ways.

Group biographies and the female friendship vogue.

Recent works inspired by his fiction struggle to reckon with his racist fantasies.

The famous activist reflects on what radicals like him got right and got wrong, and what today’s socialists should learn from his experiences.

Comedian Richard Pryor's performance of Blackness throughout his career.

A primary source set and teaching guide created by educators.

The bowl-shaped seat's conflicted heritage incorporates the Vietnam War.

Privately published memoir of an American portraitist who grew up in a log cabin and went on to paint presidents and Daniel Boone.

How city leaders and real estate barons used sunshine and oranges to market Los Angeles.

Who was behind the "Trumpist manifesto" released twenty years before Trump became president?

A curiously inflexible brand of race-first neoliberalism has taken root in American political discourse.

The KKK was clearly present at Harvard. But the university rarely mentions the 20th century in its attempts to reckon with its past.

A welfare state doesn't distort the market; it just makes government aid fairer.

Dark was the night, cold was the ground, and brilliant is that song drifting through space.

These letters and journals offer insights on how to record one's thoughts amid a pandemic.

Much of the world used to treat drug addiction as a health issue, not a criminal one. And then America got its way.

The 13th, 14th and 15th amendments tried to remove the power of the states to impede key rights.

She was one half of a powerhouse academic couple and an influential historian in her own right. But she's still often overlooked.

How do we memorialize life online when it’s constantly disappearing?

Trump, Biden, and public lands.

Daryl Michael Scott on propaganda and myth from ‘The 1619 Project’ to Trumpism.

While focusing on refuting the Lost Cause narrative, many historians forget to memorialize Black Americans in the post Civil War period.

Reconciliation is good — but not at any cost.

Self-help guru Louise Hay’s “Hayrides” drew in thousands during the hopelessness and government neglect of the AIDS crisis.

A recent documentary reminds us of her family’s strength and our own weakness.

Whose body was harvested to create a spectacular anatomical specimen, and did that person know they would be on display more than a century later?