Excerpts

And why you should give smooth jazz a chance.

A decade before Roe, Pat Maginnis’ radical activism—and righteous rage—changed the abortion debate forever.

It's about time.

Who killed J. Robert Oppenheimer's Communist lover?

It saved the Rolling Stones, altered the trajectory of music history, and turns 50 this week.

What happens when we find out writers aren't who they said they were.

On spy fiction.

America’s laws against lingering have roots in Medieval England. The goal has always been to keep anyone “out of place” away.

Philip Roth's work could only have been written by someone who came of age during the peak of postwar liberalism.

About 50 years ago.

The author of "The Second Coming of the KKK" shows an early twentieth-century attempt to go mainstream.

The persistence of a mythic second amendment in contemporary Constitutional culture.

"Marketcraft" is one of the most important functions for any government.

The author of "Ku Klux Kulture" breaks down the ‘mutually beneficial’ relationship between the Klan and the media.

The "celebrity stowaways" of the Jazz Age reached levels of virality similar to today's social media stars.

Why the Trump Era demands a better understanding of how racism got us into this mess.

Other than one or two of the world's supercentenarians, nobody remembers New York in 1911.

How Twitter bots help us understand the founding era.

Because both thinkers neglect political economy, they end up promoting a politics that is responsible for the nation's growing inequality.

In the 1980s, millions of antinuclear activists took to the streets, forcing Western governments to respond to our demands.

The new lynching memorial confronts the racial terrorism that corrupted America—and still does.

The “fetishization” of Appalachia’s supposed racial and ethnic purity and Trump's proposal to end birthright citizenship.

Sometimes you have to break the rules to create a more democratic system.

Historians are using facial recognition software to identify people in Civil War photographs.

Claire L. Evans’s new book is a bittersweet reminder that the internet used to be freer and more fun.

How the JAP became America’s most complex Jewish stereotype.

How American expansion reshaped the religious worlds of both settlers and Native people.

Looking for traces of the last person ever owned by a U.S. president.

It is not just what is remembered that is important, but how it is remembered.

How did it come to pass that a weapon banned for military use was deployed against asylum-seekers on the U.S. border?

What the immediate aftermath of the bombing looked like from the cockpit of a Japanese plane.

That's when the public learned that American multinationals were making enormous bribes to politicians in foreign countries.

How we went from “racist” to “racially tinged.”

Helen Levitt's influential urban photography depicts a time both far away and familiar.

Abortion and America’s new sectional divide.

A new book shows how women's leadership in black nationalist movements has always been hidden in plain sight.

In 1990, one of America's most beloved sitcoms took on the HIV epidemic with humor and sensitivity.

Education for women and emerging nationhood, illustrated with care and charm.

The long, entwined history of America First and the American dream.

There’s no consensus on abolishing the Electoral College, which has countered the popular vote in two of the past five presidential elections.

The uncanny realism of Orson Welles’s radio play crystallised a fear of communication technology that haunts us today.

“The Improbable Wendell Willkie” offers a look at how American politics might have been.

The horrors of the fugitive slave laws, the costs of union, and the value of comity.

Decades before WikiLeaks, Philip Agee’s magazine blew the cover of more than 2,000 CIA officers.

The 140-year journey from the streets of London's East End to the parking lot of your nearest mall.

(And what everyone read instead.)

Four historians weigh in on evangelicals' affinity for Trump – and their commitment to the conservative movement more broadly.

One of the war's greatest battles was fought again and again on a spectacular canvas nearly 400 feet long.

Religious conservatives used the Bush presidency to launch their takeover of the GOP.

An online forum on the life and legacy of Frederick Douglass.