Excerpts

The father of the country was a team player who had no interest in displays of hyper-masculinity.

The nationwide protests against police killings have been called un-American by critics, but rebellion has always been used to defend liberty.

Sports, politics, and civic identity in modern Philadelphia.

Why Southerners protesting structural racism in the criminal justice system have turned time and again to the monuments in their communities.

Trump echoed a former Miami police chief’s anti-black words and animus.

The lessons of the 1992 Los Angeles uprising and its aftermath still resonate.

As a historian, I’ve spent a lot of time looking at the fallout from Watts and other rebellions.

Robin D.G. Kelley on the predecessors to Antifa.

How local prosecutors' offices have become stepping stones to higher office.

“¿DEFACEMENT?,” Inspired by the 1983 Police Murder of Michael Stewart.

How the NYPD and its conservative allies have used fear and race baiting to curtail attempts to limit policing power in the city.

A proper understanding of urban rebellion depends on our ability to interpret it not as a wave of criminality, but as political violence.

Like everything else in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, American food has become almost unrecognizable overnight.

Could Donald Trump really rival James Buchanan?

How lynching images are testimonies to the inaction of the white justice system.

Why did the priest and the choir singer die, and what was the nature of their love?

We can only understand the left’s present dilemmas by seeing them in light of the conflicted legacy of the New Deal.

Reflections on the COVID crisis from Reconstruction.

A missing pilot and her poems.

How Titus Andronicus drew on Civil War lore to frame contemporary social divides.

Violence perpetrated by cops doesn’t simply boil down to individual bad actors—it’s also a systemic, judicial failing.

Edward White’s new monthly column, “Off Menu,” serves up lesser-told stories of chefs cooking in interesting times.

The Founders didn’t believe that broad delegations of legislative power violated the Constitution, but conservative originalists keep insisting otherwise.

How the politics of American imperialism often intersected with calls for women's suffrage.

The charivari (or shivaree) was a ritual in which people on the lower rungs of a community called out neighbors who violated social and sexual norms.

A conversation with John Nichols about the night in 1944 that altered the trajectory of the Democratic Party.

How the history of parking in America highlights its societal inequalities.

Maya Lin recounts the experience of creating the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

On the stories and landscapes the Federal Writers’ Project left unexplored.

Claims that the programs adopted in the 1930s lengthened the Great Depression don’t hold up.

In the 1930s, Americans responded to economic calamity by creating a richer and more equitable society. We can do it again.

Comparison to Nazism and fascism distracts us from how we made Trump over decades.

Backlash dynamics are one of the defining patterns of the country’s history.

The philosophy behind calls to lift stay-at-home orders.

“The idea that the federal government would be providing emergency relief and emergency work was extraordinary,” one sociologist said. “And people liked it.”

50 years after closing its schools to fight racial integration, a Virginia county still feels the effects.

A review of two new books that illuminate a range of still unrealized visions of anti-imperialism, anti-capitalism, and anti-racism.

As Americans enjoy the holiday weekend, does anyone know how Memorial Day originated?

Revisiting the Missouri Compromise should transform how we think about white American expansion.

Baseball's creation myth is bunk, and historians have shown how important cities were to the game's development. But it was still a rural passion.

A scholar depicts white supremacy as the economic engine of American history.

During the war, few Americans actually saw the 'Rosie the Riveter' poster that's become a cultural icon.

In Philadelphia, authorities faced a familiar challenge: to protect public health while maintaining individuals' rights to act, speak, and assemble freely.

Extending the narrative of Philadelphia's epidemic past 1793 yields lessons that are more complex and less comforting than the story that's often told.

The US-backed Indonesian mass killings of 1965 reshaped global politics, securing a decisive victory for U.S. interests against Third World self-determination.

A look at the economic changes that occured after the Black Death in Europe and what that could mean for the aftermath of Covid-19.

In the twentieth century, advertisements for a new type of garment for preteen girls sought to define the femininity they sold.

A review of "Washington’s End: The Final Years and Forgotten Struggle," by Jonathan Horn.

In discussions about facial-recognition software, phrenology analogies seem like a no-brainer. In fact, they’re a dead-end.

Our cash could spread disease — and there is precedent for changing it because of the pandemic.