Excerpts

Like so many black scientists past, the African who brought inoculation to the American colonies never got his due.

“America First” is a fairly useless strategy in the quest for a COVID-19 vaccine.

A new book chronicles the twists and turns of the 75-year-path to securing the vote for women.

A conversation with Breanne Fahs on the lasting lessons of women's anger.

How World Vision and Compassion International sparked an Oregon family to raise eight mixed-race children.

"Fool the Axis—use Prophylaxis!"In many ways, such a coordinated public effort to alter sexual behavior was unprecedented.

Although largely forgotten today, exercise by club swinging was all the rage in the 19th century.

Can experiencing elements of what is was like in the past make us better historians?

On the fixture of white yuppiedom and icon of post-ironic millennial hipsterdom.

How does the global effort to eradicate smallpox fit into the history of U.S.-Soviet relations?

But in 1862, the federal government doled out the 2020 equivalent of $23 million—not to the formerly enslaved but to their white enslavers.

Watchmen is a sophisticated inquiry into the ethical implications of its own form—the flash and bang, the prurience and violence of comic books.

Katherine Anne Porter’s ‘Pale Horse, Pale Rider’ tells the tale of a pandemic she barely survived.

“Either they’ve got no conscience, or they’re not awake to the gravity of the situation.”

Our thanks should be recognizing the crucial role they play in our society.

The terrifying, censored coverage of the 1918 Spanish flu.

While assisting businesses, Congress must also continue to help consumers.

History teaches us that prioritizing the economy could kill hundreds of thousands.

Has Trump plunged America into another Great Depression?

Until the mid-1800s, doctors didn’t bother washing their hands. Then a Hungarian medic made an essential, much-resisted breakthrough.

Why the battle for history must be won in the here and now.

Medical xenophobia has dangerous ramifications.

When it's safe to return, baseball can play a big role in uniting Americans and providing comfort.

Dr. Larry Brilliant, who helped eradicate smallpox, says past epidemics can teach us to fight coronavirus.

Lessons from Crip Camp, a new documentary that explores the roots of the disability rights movement.

This is nothing like 2008. Or even 1914.

My whole life, my mother told me, ‘Always remember — you’re a Madison. You come from African slaves and a president.’

Restaurants have always been about more than feeding city residents. During the 1918 flu pandemic, they were kept open as sites of social solidarity.

Dr. Maurice Hilleman caught the 1957 flu when even the military and WHO couldn't.

Today's coronavirus pandemic has echoes in the yellow fever pandemic of the 1790s. Then, workers struggled with how to support themselves and their families.

The most important design object of our time was more than a century in the making.

Cholera maps chart the movement of the disease, and the terror that accompanied it.

The Trump administration appears ready to invoke the Defense Production Act to speed manufacture of essential goods like face masks.

A century ago, Catholic nuns from Philadelphia recalled what it was like to tend to the needy and the sick during the great influenza pandemic of 1918.

What we can learn from the Spanish flu.

Using the Defense Production Act is long overdue — and the health of our doctors and nurses is at stake.

Government inaction or delay have shaped the course of many infectious disease outbreaks in our country.

The US carceral state is a monstrosity with few parallels in history. But most accounts fail to understand how it was created, and how we can dismantle it.

The Gold Rush introduced a new figure into the American imagination – the effete Eastern urbanite who travels to the Wild West in quest of his fortune.

In the past two centuries, the evolution of the U.S. Census has tracked the country’s social tensions and reflected its political controversies.

Citizenship used to demand sacrifice. Then we taught Americans to buy things instead.

As coronavirus becomes an ever-increasing threat to our lives, there seems to be one thing that people around the world cannot go without the most.

Over the centuries, societies have shown a long history of making the effects of epidemics worse and furthering their own destruction.

A primary source set and teaching guide created by educators.

Eighty years ago, U.S. industry mobilized in a big way during a crisis. We could do it again.

Nicholas Lemann’s history of 20th century corporations, Transaction Man, shows how an unrelenting faith in the market and profit doomed the American economy.

Tracing the American cemetery from the colonial age to the Gilded Age.

Jim Downs discusses the plight of freed slaves during the Civil War and Reconstruction.

New York, 1907. Mary Mallon spreads infection, unaware that her name will one day become synonymous with typhoid.

There’s a fatal history behind the claim that African Americans are more resistant to diseases like Covid-19 or yellow fever.