Excerpts

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.

Why are Americans so obsessed with tornadoes? A brief tour of twister culture has the answer.

Original footage of ironworkers constructing the Chrysler Building (1929-30).

When the government urged Americans to cut back on wheat consumption, bakers came up with creative solutions.

A new book details how the young nation regarded its recent and more ancient pasts.

Keeping meat production moving during the pandemic is dangerous. But history shows that there’s little Americans won’t sacrifice for a cheap steak.

Newspapers must be for the people. It’s worth investing our tax dollars in them.

Eric Foner reviews two new books that make the case against the Electoral College.

The first major general strike in the United States coincided with the last major pandemic. Here’s the full story.

Vivian Gornick’s and Jodi Dean’s books mine a lost history of comradeship, determination, and intimacy.

J. Chester Johnson on the Elaine Race Massacre of 1919.

What 'the forgotten man of American conservatism' has to say about current debates on the right.

From the Illuminati to “COVID-19 is a lie,” how pandemics have produced contagions of fear.

Historians’ lectures provide material for improv comedians.

Three new books consider the life, and impact, of Franz Boas, the "father of American cultural anthropology."

Science doesn’t make you magically objective, and it’s not separate from the rest of human experience.

The public fascination was so intense that fans soon started demanding live reenactments.

A scholar of the history of race sets out on an exploration of his own family roots, and despite his better judgement, is moved by what he discovers.

For hundreds of years, doctors thought nostalgia was a disease. Now, it's a name for our modern condition.

The original “Zoom” burst joyfully out of Boston in the 1970s, and is still beloved by older members of Generation X.

A conversation with historian Marcus Rediker about multiracial mobs, history from below and the memory of struggle.

William Barr’s long struggle against congressional oversight.

An airstrike killed 11 people, including five children, in an assault on a Philadelphia black liberation group. Now a reconciliation effort is under way.

History shows that men have always been able to handle care work — when they have to.

Unlike cholera, physical and sensory proximity can spread COVID-19 among the populations most vulnerable to it.

In 1988, Jesse Jackson ran for president on a platform that included universalist policies like single-payer. His success terrified establishment Democrats.

By adopting middle-class aesthetics, the bar-basement bowling alley became the "poor man's country club."

Reflections on the life of Little Richard, the star who mistook a satellite for a ball of fire.

The bond market has fueled vast inequities between cities and suburbs — especially in smaller locales.

Jefferson envisioned land-use policies that he hoped would mitigate epidemics – and other urban evils.

In the middle of the biggest international crisis ever since, it’s time to admit what the war was—and wasn’t.

For hundreds of years, false theories of “innate difference and deficit in black bodies” have shaped American responses to disease.