Excerpts

Remembering how the white working class got left out of the New Left, and why we're all paying for it today.

The cabaret law—and its prejudicial history—is one of the city's darkest secrets.

Elizabeth Hinton discusses how twentieth-century policymakers anticipated the explosion of the prison population.

A review of a handful of new books that embody the new liberal originalism.

A century ago, millions of Americans banded together to reform the KKK, the rest turned a blind eye.

In her newest book, Barbara Ehrenreich attacks the "epidemic" of wellness.

Esquire, 1940: “Salads are really the man’s department... Only a man can make a perfect salad.”

A century ago, these documents were used to reinforce segregation. Today, they’re being used to impose binary identities on transgender people.

In the 1720s, French colonial authorities seized children off the streets of Paris and forced them to settle the New World.

After the drug was dismissed by the pharmaceutical company that developed it, a researcher started experimenting on himself with it. Powerful hallucinations ensued.

It is only recently that domestic abuse was identified as a serious, public social problem.

South Carolina’s Ben Tillman and the 2016 presidential election.

The civil rights activist and her family had to contend with racial discrimination beyond Montgomery.

And how the Rolling Stones, a band in love with black music, helped lead the way to rock’s segregated future.

Like the abolitionists of yesteryear, white Americans who oppose racial oppression deserve to be remembered and emulated.

Stumbling on a forgotten Reconstruction tragedy, in a forgotten corner of Louisiana.

Here's how they were able to do their jobs long before the Internet.

Both the nation and the Church have depended on the energy and expertise of nuns. They’re vanishing. Now what?

Why do people hike?

"None of us really understands what's going on with all these numbers."

In Nogales, Arizona, the United States and Mexico agreed to build walls separating their countries.

The Janus decision is a significant setback for democracy. What should public-sector workers do now?

Enslaved wet nurses were a valued purchase in the antebellum South.

The war brought many couples together. It also drove many apart.

The world’s most popular fast food has ancient roots and a royal pedigree.

His photo of Kim Phuc was a transformative moment in a horrible conflict.

The redistricting revolution, fifty years later.

Before it became the New World, the Western Hemisphere was an altogether more salubrious place to live at the time than, say, Europe.

In an effort to address centuries of systemic racism, a new online tool seeks to connect Black, brown, and Indigenous farmers with land and resources.

With Diner, Barry Levinson turned a film about nothing into a male-bonding classic, launched careers, and spawned hits from Seinfeld to The Office.

The influential activist was a strong proponent of Pan-Africanism.

The marriage of twentieth-century avant-gardists Arthur Cravan and Mina Loy was blissfully happy—until his mysterious disappearance.

The nineteenth-century bourgeoisie used morality to assert class dominance — something elites still do today.

Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump may prove that having once been a Democrat is an asset for a Republican presidential nominee for president

When the Supreme Court willfully misreads the Constitution, FDR’s plan doesn’t seem so bad.

Before you grab the 'raw,' some thoughts on how food was before safety and labeling regs were passed.

On the intellectual history of the lines and arrows that have become a standard feature of the news media.

Librarians are once again raising concerns over the book’s depiction of Native Americans.

Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement marks the end of an era on the Supreme Court—and a turn toward hard-edged partisanship.

A network of professional librarians seeks to destroy a beloved literary heroine and malign her creator.

How John Marshall, Joseph Story, and Roger Taney strengthened the institution of slavery and embedded in the law a systemic hostility to fundamental freedom and basic justice.

We used to fill our time capsules with fancy stuff. Now we put in junk.

We have always questioned the spiritual and physical effects of alcohol.

In the era of the voting wars, the right to vote is itself a subject of continued partisan, regional, and racial conflict.

Why do we lock up so many people?

Since 9/11 the story behind the Falling Man, and the search for him, is our most intimate connection to the horror of that day.

She used mine shafts as a beer fridge and shot bears to get lard for pie crusts.

Why it's important to know that Marsha P. Johnson did not start the riots at Stonewall.

Everyone from immigration advocates to bigots and nativists have valued family unity.

If you understand why that Civil War statue really went up, the debate over removing it looks a lot different.