Excerpts

The way America is ending its War in Afghanistan is comparable to how it pulled out of the conflict in Vietnam.

Carter’s speech lays out his commitment to implement human rights into U.S. foreign policy.

President Clinton’s address revealed the strength of NATO and publicly signaled a post-Cold War shift in U.S. foreign policy.

Oscar night has become a platform for stars to pitch political causes.

They played essential behind-the-scenes roles as the American movie industry was taking off. What happened?

The value of shame in objects.

A cheeky biography of the first president pulls no punches.

Forty years ago he announced a new American doctrine of aggressive Middle East interventionism that never went away.

A day-by-day account of the historic summit in Yalta, seventy-five years later.

The sick history of the U.S. campaign song.

A new history of Andrew Johnson’s trial reminds us the impeachment is a tool to constrain executive abuse of power and publicize dissent on matters of policy.

William Dorsey Swann fought for queer freedom a century before Stonewall.

What makes a hero? Why do we remember some stories and not others?

Rosa Parks discusses her refusal to give up a seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Alabama bus in 1955.

"Every film about war ends up being pro-war," Francois Truffaut once said.

The Cold War and today.

From rum to cakes to rowdy parades, election day was a time for gathering and celebration.

Stories about the past can help communities create an identity of which they can be proud. This was certainly the case at Christiana.

Designed as a bucolic working-class suburb of St. Louis, the nearly all-black town of Centreville now floods with raw sewage every time it rains.

Thomas crunches history and Hollywood tropes in his first solo show in L.A.

History shows that this blockbuster event is merely a test of organizational strength in one small state.

By examining the upheaval of the nineteen-thirties, we can recognize similarities between today and democracy's last near-death experience.

West Virginians left Virginia to ensure that the people's voices were heard, not to benefit special interests at the expense of democracy.

“Whenever there’s a tragedy in black America, there’s always been an uptick of black history courses."

Gouverneur Morris’s views changed during the Constitutional Convention — setting a good example for senators today.

Is it possible to write a good Civil War romance?

Revisiting the timeless 1992 debut from Dr. Dre, a historic moment in hip-hop that redefined West Coast rap.

How Congress bent the rules to combat the Spanish Flu while it's own members began to become victims of the pandemic

A Pompous Doctor, a Racist Bureaucracy, and More. From the book "Black Death at the Golden Gate".

Critics of the New York Times’s 1619 Project obscure a longstanding debate among historians over whether the American Revolution was a proslavery revolt.

Erasing the women of the founding era makes it harder to see women as leaders today.

When regulators dictate who grows a cash crop, they can spread the wealth—or help the rich get richer.

One in four cowboys was black. So why aren’t they more present in popular culture?

Roy Cohn connects the McCarthy era to the age of Trump across more than half a century.

The Northern Student Movement considered inviting Rosa Parks to give a speech on police brutality, but ultimately decided against it.

Activists and preservationists are changing the kinds of places that are protected—and what it means to preserve them.

Reflections on the long career of race science at Mr. Jefferson's university.

The ‘margarine wars’ explain the 19th-century struggle to regulate food.

What does winning in Iowa really mean?

How a term that sounds inclusive is used to promote exclusion.

Donald Judd, Richard Wollheim, and the origins of what we now describe as minimalist.

A longer look reveals interesting patterns and may clarify what is driving a rise in suicides.

Guest poster C.C. Borzilleri writes about professional motherhood in the early American republic.

California entered the Union as a free state, but there are hidden stories of slavery to be told.

San Bernardino, California's early success rested on a pair of seemingly incongruous forces: Mormonism and slavery.

The question remains whether spaces like MOCA will remain vibrant in a future where notions of community grow more abstract.

Ayelet Waldman on the landmark case O’Connor v. Donaldson.

An historian debunks the vice president’s op-ed.

Why criminalizing political opposition can be dangerous.

Evidence shows Native Americans in New England lived lightly on the land for thousands of years. Europeans were the first to majorly impact the environment.