Excerpts

A hurricane historian talks about the still-unfolding disaster in Puerto Rico.

Scholars disagree on existing precedents—and the question won’t be settled until evidence leads a prosecutor to try it.

Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich were hooked on his diet.

Cybex fitness equipment fills gyms around the world. Where did it come from?

America’s favorite piece of workout equipment was developed as a device for forced labor in British prisons.

In his 2-million-word journal, the transcendentalist balanced poetic wonder and scientific rigor as he explored the natural world.

The swimsuit that's controversial now for its sexist overtones was once controversial for its suggestions of women’s liberation.

Irish tattoos in 1860s New York.

For a time, eating and relaxing among the dead was a national pastime.

The "bikini body" is out. But the pressure to maintain the ideal female physique lives on.

Hill revisits the infamous Clarence Thomas hearings with five of the congressional women who supported her.

In 1991, Anita Hill publicly accused then Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment in the early 1980s.

White victimhood's roots in the Civil War.

In an open letter, an encyclopedia editor stands behind the use of the term "white supremacy" to describe the UDC's work.

A century-old image and the film it inspired.

How the New England town became the mythical landscape of American democracy.

Connecting the dots between discriminatory housing policies in the 1930s and urban food insecurity today.

Is the unique dialect a vestige of Elizabethan England? Left over from Scots-Irish immigrants? Or something else altogether?

The ethical formation of citizens was once at the heart of the US elite college. Has this moral purpose gone altogether?

Why Confederacy supporters erased the legacy of one its most accomplished soldiers.

The surprise vice presidential nomination of Julian Bond suddenly turned the televised discussion to poverty, racism, and war.

An excerpt from a novel by Todd Gitlin that reimagines the violence outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Each one flown outside the slave states amounts to an admission that the flag represents whiteness, not Southernness.

The grand lesson of John McCain's life should be that heroic politics is a broken politics.

Conservatives love rules about political balance — when they’re in charge.

The bizarre origin story of the surprisingly exceptional Oklahoma City, in a government-sanctioned raid called the Land Run.

During Watergate, historians helped catalogue accusations made against past Presidents; their findings may be useful again.

A behind-the-scenes account of the most important company on the Internet, from grad-school all-nighters to extraordinary global power.

George Washington knew the perils of letting scandals linger.

The region was at the epicenter of eugenic policy-making in the first half of the 20th century.

When the blazing sun came up on the teenagers' first day of work, "everyone looked at each other, and said, 'What did we do?'"

The FBI has long tried to destroy socialist organizations, but its actions aren't limited to surveillance.

Just-discovered letters herald the significance of an unsung Revolutionary woman, Julia Rush.

The connections between the two systems of labor have been persistently neglected in mainstream business history.

(When It’s Already Summarized in This Article?)

In the wake of abuse scandals, lay people, not priests, should have more power.

A review of Zephyr Teachout's "Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin’s Snuff Box to Citizens United."

Talk about caudillos is always, in reality, a discussion of their followers.

How plastic bags came to rule our lives, and why we can’t quit them.

Why so many commentators share an overly grim view of America’s fate.

The Lincoln Memorial, the NY Public Library lions, and the senate pediment of the US Capitol Building are among their creations.

The congressman and former slave claimed whites had killed 53,000 African-Americans. Few took him seriously—until now.

Embracing the swamp won't sink Trump immediately. But it will sink him eventually.

Why Washington needs more honest graft.

In an effort to open Congress, they institutionalized a confrontational style that permeates contemporary politics today.

The "Gangland Map" features drunken fish and goofy jokes alongside descriptions of brutal murders.

The budding mogul had a soft spot (but a short memory) for wiseguys.

The Obama library lands on Chicago.

A 1974 review of Robert Caro's "The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York."

Protesters toppled the 1913 statue Monday, making it the latest Civil War memorial to be removed by government or demonstrators.