Excerpts

In the United States, the Populist tradition has always defined left-wing and egalitarian politics, unfairly maligned by bosses and intellectuals alike.

The past, present, and future of your family tree are all far more fascinating than you realize.

When R.E. Buster Williams ruled jukeboxes and jukeboxes ruled music.

On the evening of October 7, 1952, gospel promoters booked the Spirit of Memphis for a concert in Memphis’s Mason Temple.

Which public figures impacted baby naming trends?

Why Netflix looks like that.

The Pyramid Club is the stuff of downtown New York legend. In the 1980s, a tiny little dive bar became ground zero for the exploding New York drag scene.

While America was fighting on the ground, the Federation was fighting in space.

Are we doomed to repetition? It’s something I worry about.

Two new books examine how colonial logic has long been embedded within US carceral systems.

For the people of Old Bhopal, an accident there had sent forty metric tons of methyl isocyanate into a runaway reaction that released a toxic gas.

The rise and fall of an evangelical church, founded with progressive intentions and undone by dissension and bad faith.

Karen Silkwood death and smear campaign highlights how retaliation against whistleblowers deflects scrutiny from power by targeting the messenger.

Even Trump’s recent assertion that he would use executive action to abolish birthright citizenship has a historical link to the Chinese American experience.

For all of his personal Christian devotion, he could not capture the hearts of white evangelicals.

History also changes because of strange, flawed, deeply human people doing unremarkable, tedious, and often boring work.

In Black Southern life, guns have been a sign of readiness against constant threats.

Dismantling it requires getting the story right.

Ray Schoenke started campaigning for George McGovern in 1971 because he wanted to make a difference. The experience ended up changing his life.

The bishops once used their influence to encourage nuclear disarmament. Can they do so again now?

Pryor's use of the word represented something valiant.

Bob Dylan decided he wanted to subvert the expectations of his fans – and rebel against industry forces intent on pigeonholing him and his work.

Our new age of violence looks a lot like the Gilded Age.

What it conveys is quite specific: grandeur, beauty, dynamism, and power.

Today’s Trumpist radicals are not (small-c) conservatives – but they stand in the continuity of Modern Conservatism’s defining political project.

What kind of Christmas did we used to know? To hear some critics and historians tell it, the holiday used to be a lot more religious than it is now.

This remarkably prescient document holds several lessons about how to run foreign policy.

South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol’s declaration of martial law is of little import compared to the American occupation of the country.

Carlyle Group founder David Rubenstein has cultivated a reputation as a well-meaning advocate of history education. What does that image mask?

The 1946 elections were a disaster for Democrats—and the reason I was born.

Margaret Sanger and Mary Ware Dennett each had a different vision of reproductive freedom. Would reproductive rights be more secure if Dennett’s had prevailed?

The Southern president, who kept his head down following Brown v. Board of Education, would eventually declare that “the time for discrimination is over.”

As an individual, Jimmy Carter stood as a rebuke to our venal and heartless political class. As a politician, his private virtues proved to be public vices.

At 50, the game is more popular than ever, but its core appeal is still a great secret.

A newly released classified document shows that the National Security Agency knew Ethel Rosenberg was not a spy—and that the government executed her anyway.

Since the 2024 election, liberals, progressives, and the left has been wringing our collective hands over why Trump won yet again.

What’s going on here, and are we ever going to talk about it?

Nixon was quietly vindicated by the Supreme Court in its Trump v. United States. A half-century later, the Supreme Court made clear that he was right all along.

Despite Chalamet’s best efforts, "A Complete Unknown" is a cookie-cutter Bob Dylan biopic for a legendary artist who deserves something more interesting.

A fascinating new exhibit focuses on Baldwin’s years in Turkey, the country that, in his words, saved his life.

Humans love to imagine their own demise.

In every generation, charlatans come along with a plan to make education better by spending less money on schools.

Josie Rudolph’s life, in an era of worldwide migration and colonial ambition, offers a new perspective on the familiar tale of modern Alaska’s birth.

The very American racism of the notorious late Rabbi Meir Kahane.

Grover Cleveland enthusiasts aren’t thrilled that Donald Trump won a nonconsecutive presidential term.

Shaul Magid attempts to show us how much contemporary Jews have inherited from a man most have tried to forget.

How can we most efficiently defend the imperiled academy?

Justin B. Wymer knows a snake when he sees one.

On a documentary in which stars from Bob Dylan to Nile Rodgers discuss how music played a vital role in the unknown politician’s rise to power.

There’s a reason the 39th president is still revered by former Soviet dissidents.