Excerpts

Apollo’s successful computing software was optimized to deal with unknown problems.

So gooey, so good.

“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

A front-page article helped incite the violence in the nation’s capital that left as many as 39 dead.

Nancy Pelosi's reluctance to impeach Trump only denies the reality of his transgressions.

The billions spent on the Apollo program, no matter how inspiring the mission, laid bare the nation's priorities.

Views that were fringe in Perot’s day had, by the 2016 election, taken center stage.

From Germans and Irish to blacks and Jews, new Americans often have been told to “go home.”

It happened during Andrew Jackson’s administration, with fatal consequences.

America won its freedom thanks to strong alliances.

Beyond public accommodations and schools, resistance to integration included keeping pools and amusement parks segregated.

The automobile took over because the legal system helped squeeze out the alternatives.

How a profit-driven approach to water rights left the west high and dry.

A new take on the origins of our ideas about religious liberty.

The archives narrate the human rights abuses committed by Argentina’s military government, often with the assistance of the US.

Natasha Trethewey on experiencing a past not our own.

Beset by poverty, Glendora, Mississippi clings desperately to a version of Till's story that few others seem to believe.

The United States must devise a program that addresses the root causes of migration.

At the time of the Apollo 11 landing, some Americans had reservations about reaching for the stars when troubles swelled on Earth.

The Bush administration thought an elective war would make America safer. Then Katrina hit.

Why the 1969 moon landing signaled the end of the massive American empire of the 20th century.

A century after the 19th Amendment, it’s worth remembering why suffragists fought so hard, and who was fighting against them.

In 1933, the Harlem Renaissance star wrote a powerful essay about race. It has never been published in English—until now.

Reports of the death of nuanced interpretations of the Civil War have been grossly exaggerated.

100 years ago, a tennis player shocked spectators with her “indecent” dress—not for the last time.

On the cancelling of Charles Lindbergh.

There's a lot more than money at stake in the impending auction.

After a Rio Grande flood shifted a 437-acre strip of land from Mexico to Texas, the area was the site of a long border dispute.

A review of Lisa Duggan's book, "Mean Girl: Ayn Rand and the Culture of Greed.”

Only in the science fiction genre can one compare an alien to a woman.

Lost letters between Jane Addams and her best friend leave questions for historians,

How could Armstrong, born indisputably black at the height of Jim Crow and raised poor, be so happy?

From 1896 until the 1930s, showmen would travel the country staging wrecks at state fairs.

Public Enemy's "Fight the Power," featured in Spike Lee's "Do the Right Thing," embodied many sentiments of a black generation.

The weddings made possible by local government and broad legal language.

The long and complicated life of Kipling's famous poem.

According to the recent discoveries, civil rights activist, Dorothy Cotton, and King had a close romantic relationship.

The right turned Linda Taylor into a bogeyman. But her real life was much more complicated.

Gravely inaccurate 19th-century depictions of the destruction of Rome are used to illustrate parallels between Rome and the U.S.

25 years later, what does Gump mean?

The abuse of data from the 1940 census has fueled fears about a citizenship question on the 2020 census form.

"Inevitably, the age of national bootblacks and national oyster houses and national blacksmiths produced national history books."

As we debate reparations, we need to get the facts right.

Understanding the rivalry between England and the Netherlands is crucial to understanding that between New England and New York.

The expansion of banks like Citigroup into Cuba, Haiti, and beyond reveal a story of capitalism built on blood, labor, and race.

A 1918 dispatch from a Yiddish newspaper documents the experiences of women legally voting for the first time.

The right to public defense wasn’t granted by elites. It was won by socialist-led mass movements.

What would an American dictionary meen for the men and wimmen of America?

Did the movies ever matter? They did to Ronald Reagan.

In 19th-century America, rare old bones were a resource like any other.