Excerpts

How 18th-century British arms sales, the slave trade, and the Revolutionary War contributed to the mess we have today.

Two 19th century outhouses provide rare archaeological evidence of abortion.

Redlining tours explain how policies designed to keep minorities out of certain areas shaped the urban landscapes we see today.

An analysis of the Carnegie Commission's 1967 report shows that public broadcasting has always been a politically fraught issue.

On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, it's important to remember why America welcomes refugees.

America's founders have never enjoyed more sex appeal, but the hit Musical cheats audiences by making democracy look easy

Why Broadway's biggest villain is worth a second look.

Why liberals have embraced our most dangerously reactionary founder.

On these pages you will meet Monroe Nathan Work, who lived from 1866- 1945. This website is a rebirth of one piece of his work.

An interview with Annette Gordon-Reed and Peter S. Onuf.

Despite what Steve King says, the U.S. was never a Christian nation.

Wolf-whistling has been at the heart of some of history’s most iconic films and cartoons. But is it time to write its obituary?

The Founders feared democracy and didn't think too highly of "the people".

This bad old tradition isn’t quite dead.

Posing as ‘John Barron,’ he claimed he owned most of his father’s real estate empire.

Decades after Nixon waged war on pot, Trump is doing the some with opioids. It could make things worse.

What if the problem isn’t the president—it’s the presidency?

On the origins of racial exclusion in the society that would become the United States of America.

A series of objects of both Native and non-Native origin that tell a story of extraordinary culture disruption.

FDR cited military necessity as the basis for incarcerating 120,000 Japanese Americans.

This film is a rare record of San Francisco's downtown area before its destruction in the 1906 earthquake and fire.

Noah Webster, author of An American Dictionary of the English Language published in 1828, invented the word "immigration."

We had to count them all.

The eliding of the ugliness of America's racial history is neither novel nor particularly surprising.

Blackboards will endure as symbols of learning long after they’ve disappeared from schools.

Even in a high-tech era, fears about minority political agency are the most reliable way to destabilize the U.S. political system.

With questionable motives, America finally saw black Union soldiers living and dying alongside their white countrymen.

Of all the precedents the first president set, this is one of his most overlooked — and most important.

What's the real history behind Trump's 'witch hunt' tweets?

His groundbreaking rock-n-roll was neither 'thievery' nor 'derivative blackness.'

"The Color of Law" offers an indicting critique of the progressive agenda.

There are many theories about the origin of 420, but five guys named Waldo started it all.

We asked about monuments in your home town. Here's what you said.

Before Americans turned to Buddhism for life hacks, they treated it like a dangerous cult.

A look at the first year of the band originally known as Mookie Blaylock.

And how the term came to be code for pot-smoking in the first place.

How we inherited our modern understanding of childhood from the 18th-century revolutionary era.

Critics argue the move would violate the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act. One problem: There is no 1878 Posse Comitatus Act.

The America that emerged out of the Civil War was meant to be a radically more equal place. What went wrong?

Why don't TV families go to Disney World as much as they used to?

Each year there is one undeniable 'song of summer.'

Reform is simply not possible.

Religious "freedom" and "liberty" have always had different connotations.

Unlike Nixon's famous "silent majority," Trump's backers are loud - and growing in volume

Health care spending grew more slowly in the past two years than it has in over five decades.

Obama's desire to “look forward” on torture has enabled Trump to look backward in his appointment of a new CIA director.

How do Trump's first 100 days measure up?

Racial justice energized the party in the past. It can today too.

A lawyer details the attack by hundreds of whites on the black neighborhood where hundreds died 95 years ago.

Nine maps of the transatlantic slave trade between 1500 and 1900.