Excerpts

Ann Hodges was hit by a meteorite in her Alabama home in 1954.

The dark origins of the first mascots.

The story of Vinegar Hill, a historically African American neighborhood in Charlottesville, Virginia.

John Canaday's poems look at nuclear weapons from the intimate perspectives of its developers.

Nostalgia and technological innovation paved the way for the rise of model-train giant Lionel.

A new book on James Buchanan and public-choice theory explores the Southern roots of the free-market right.

The correspondence of Generals Dwight D. Eisenhower and George C. Marshall leading up to D-Day.

The Allied invasion of France was an important step in the war against the Nazis. But it was by no means a turning point.

If the sci-fi space cities of Bezos’s Blue Origin look familiar, it’s because they’re derived from the work of his college professor.

Reparations for African-Americans has been a hot topic on the presidential campaign trail, but the debate goes back centuries.

What does it look like when city names are replaced by their most Wikipedia’ed resident?

The state prides itself on its abolitionist history. But its identity has been shaken by recent racist incidents.

When it came to gathering refugees, the waiting room of the US consulate was probably the closest thing to Rick’s Café Américain.

In the 1930s, park planning was pretty.

A "yearbook" documents the U.S. military occupation of Nagasaki in the aftermath of the atomic bomb.

The historical record is clear: democracy was only won when poor people waged disruptive class struggle against the rich.

Southern newspapers played a major role in racial violence. Do they owe their communities an apology?

It didn't go exactly as planned. But for TAC's founder, this is where his populist antiwar movement may have begun.

During the Civil War, surrendering was an honorable way of accepting defeat — under the right circumstances.

Almost 60 years later, a mother regrets her decision to send her 6-year-old into a hate-filled environment.

A new study on the toll of contract buying in Chicago during the 1950s and 1960s: $3 billion to $4 billion in lost black wealth.

The Olin Foundation funded the Federalist Society, seminars for judges, and much more.

Oak Bluffs is a complex community that elite families, working-class locals and social-climbing summerers all claim as their own.

Our young nation was very poor, the war was very expensive, and Congress and the states wanted everyone else to pay.

At first glance, frontier towns near the U.S.-Mexico border seem oblivious both of history and of the current political reality.

Ava DuVernay’s miniseries shows why more children had to stand trial as adults than at any other time before this 1989 case.

A century after women won the right to vote, The Atlantic reflects on the grueling fight for suffrage—and what came after.

Revealing these materials could be considered “Hoover’s revenge.”

How the 1960s Black Is Beautiful movement inspired her latest Fenty fashion collection.

Admiral William D. Leahy was instrumental in bringing the Allies together to agree upon the invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe.

Our age-based laws have never made sense. With modern science, they make even less sense.

President Trump’s skirting around Congress to sell arms to Saudi Arabia is only the latest example of presidential overreach.

The furor that erupted throughout New York City cannot be disentangled from the long history of the urban oasis.

Amid reports that Trump may pardon accused or convicted war criminals, it's worth remembering Nixon's response to the My Lai Massacre.

A history sheds light on venture capital’s ties to the military-industrial complex.

It was the original idea behind Medicare itself.

The international ambitions of the US slaveholding class and the abolitionist movement that brought them down.

I reviewed publications from the founding era, and discovered that “executive power” doesn’t imply what most scholars thought.

The nostalgia of some conservatives hearkens back to a different—and irretrievable—economic time.

The shift in attitudes about Nixon's impeachment suggests that Congress' actions can shape public opinion.

When a trillion locusts ate everything in sight.

25 years later, The Bell Curve’s analysis of race and intelligence refuses to die.

Why is U.S. foreign policy dominated by an unelected, often reckless cohort of “the best and the brightest”?

Native Americans say the law protects their children. The Goldwater Institute claims it does the opposite.

Athletes who helped shape our times and the economic freedom that enabled them.

Memphis wants to remove a statue honoring first grand wizard of the KKK.

An inside look at a forgotten Northeast epicenter of smallpox treatment.

The origins of the more passive view of the freedom of the press can be traced back to Benjamin Franklin.

A new history of Reconstruction traces the roots of American “respectability” politics through artwork.

A new study finds that federal drug policy didn’t just send more black men to jail—it also locked them out of higher education.