Excerpts

Asking difficult questions often comes at a cost.

How Southern whites found replacements for their emancipated slaves in the prison system.

What the DNA controversy reveals about race, identity politics, and the Native American present.

50 years after King's death, his image has been transformed and stripped of its radicalism.

Traveling to the heart of Mexico for a Ceremonia del Perdón.

War, famine and persecution inflict profound changes on bodies and brains. Could these changes persist over generations?

An interview with horror historian David J. Skal.

A new study on Civil War prisoners suggests that our parents’—and even grandparents’—experiences might affect our DNA.

Gingrich turned partisan battles into bloodsport, wrecked Congress, and paved the way for Trump’s rise. Now he’s reveling in it.

When academics embraced scientific racism, immigration restrictions, and the suppression of “the unfit”.

The Spotify and Ancestry partnership proposes to entertain users based on the narrowest possible conception of who they are.

How mail-order catalogues subverted the racial hierarchy of Jim Crow.

The roots of the attacks on Elizabeth Warren.

DNA’s visual culture and the construction of genetic truth.

A handful of images from Chicago as it was some 75 years ago.

How the right created the illusion of colorblindness.

Wayback Machine Director Mark Graham outlines the scale of everyone's favorite archive.

Congress isn't safe from foreign interference. It never has been.

Why a 47-year old anti-colonialist critique by Chilean dissidents may be newly relevant in the Trump era.

A series of interactive maps showing the results of nearly two centuries of congressional elections.

A makeshift memorial in New Mexico dedicated to Hispanic Union soldiers "looks like just a taco stand, without any tacos."

A new book chronicles the shocking, decades-long effort to combat venereal disease by locking up girls and women.

The battle over where the papers of the Republic of Texas should reside reminds us of the politics of historical memory.

You’re not 28 percent Finnish, either.

Most of President Donald Trump's 20th-century predecessors expressed profound admiration for Confederate general Robert E. Lee.

100 years ago, a mail-order retail giant moved swiftly into the brick-and-mortar business, changing it forever.

The history of labor strikes shows that, in order to achieve lasting success, workers need to capture political power.

From today's vantage, the remarkable achievements of the writer and social justice activist are finally coming into focus.

Columbus wasn't unique in his belief that bizarre, monstrous humanoids inhabited the far reaches of the world.

In 2001, two men were killed by the FBI at a farm in Michigan. Then, 9/11 happened.

To understand Catholic overrepresentation on the U.S. Supreme Court, we must look to the history of American Catholic education.

Here's how it's supposed to handle Supreme Court nominations.

Why a radical group of environmentalists turned to direct action in defense of wild nature.

A new book offers lessons drawn from Harper Lee's ambivalent treatment of this iconic character.

Berea College has paid for every enrollee’s education using its endowment for 126 years. Can other schools replicate the model?

Commentators compared the Nazi leader to Napoleon, Philip of Macedon, and Nebuchadnezzar.

For generations, a North Carolina town founded by former slaves has been disproportionately affected by environmental calamity.

The violence on Capitol Hill that foreshadowed a bloody war.

For well over a hundred years, paleontology has done double duty as mass entertainment.

MacArthur leaned on JFK to stay out of Vietnam. Had Kennedy survived, might history have been different?

Trump is not Hitler and Trumpism is not Nazism. Still, we are witnessing a story that's unlikely to have a happy ending.

In 2005, Howard Zinn explained why it was naive to depend on the Court to defend the rights of marginalized Americans.

Two historians shed light on the atrocities of Native American enslavement and genocide.

What sorts of youthful transgressions are forgivable, and which are disqualifying, for which jobs?

What constitutes death is based on more factors than those that are medical.

The Indians who greeted Columbus were believed to have died out. But a search for their descendants yielded surprising results.

Acknowledging the truth about colonialism is crucial if we want to comprehend the world around us today.

A response to Samuel Moyn’s “Resisting the Juristocracy.”

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor on why it's so important to tell the stories of people who have fueled social justice movements.

The way to address politicization in the courts is not de-politicization but counter-politicization.