Excerpts

How Americans went from adventurous eaters to plain janes—and then back again.

This negates a commonly used defense that Confederate symbols represent ‘heritage not hate’.

Donald Trump's children aren't the only family members with political power in the Trump administration.

The worldview laid out in the 94-year old law is still the foundational principle of American immigration policy today.

On Memorial Day weekend, we celebrate an icon of vernacular design.

We should take him seriously. Black Americans have been threatened with deportation before and it never ends well.

In researching his family's past, the author learns of his ancestors' efforts to thrive despite the confines of racial oppression.

Leaked documents reveal coordination between big business and law enforcement to break up last year’s protests at Standing Rock.

Today's Christian nationalists and liberal secularists both oversimplify the history of the nation's founding.

Polarization in Congress began in the 1970s, and its only been getting worse since.

Over the years, there have been surprisingly few of them.

The 37th president used methods of media manipulation that Donald Trump can only fantasize about.

If Dwight Eisenhower or Ronald Reagan were transported to 2017, they would be shocked that the United States is considering an attack on North Korea.

A new study overturns economic orthodoxy and shows that unions reduce inequality.

The most famous Emancipation holiday is more necessary now than it has ever been.

Black power, and the causes it supports, began long before the official Black Power movement.

The Great Dismal Swamp was once a thriving refuge for runaways.

Columbia professor Richard R. John explains the history of U.S. monopolies and why antimonopoly should not be conflated with antitrust.

Decades of tough-on-crime policies that criminalized the poor and people of color are yet to be undone, but the pendulum is beginning to swing.

How every major industry and marketplace in America came to be controlled by a single, monolithic player.

An interactive depiction of more than a century's worth of foreign travel by U.S. presidents and secretaries of state.

When Democrats claimed the individual mandate, Republicans lost their best idea for health-care reform.

In dismantling Obamacare and slashing Medicaid, Republicans would strike a blow against signature victories for racial equality in America.

The word 'history' evolved from an ancient Greek verb, but its definition has changed over the years

The memorial to the men sat in a field until 2010 when officials took a fork lift to it.

The bill unleashed a poisonous idea: that America had defeated racism.

Prisons today undergo criticism but in the 19th and the 20th century prisons treated their inmates as "slaves of the state.”

In 1935, as lava from Mauna Loa advanced on Hilo, the not-yet-famous Army general was called to the rescue.

How seaside towns throughout the northeast limited the ability of ‘undesirables’ to access public beaches.

The researchers compiling the U.S. Army’s accounts of Iraq and Afghanistan have an unprecedented volume of material to sort.

New labels at the Worcester Art Museum are drawing attention to the connections between art, slavery, and wealth in early America.

James Comey’s testimony joins the pantheon of dramatic congressional moments.

You cannot have reconciliation without empathy. And you can’t have empathy unless people know the past pain that informs our present.

Buying goods in the Old South revealed the fragile politics at the heart of master-slave relation.

An exclusive excerpt from "The One Device" about the engineering fight that created the iPhone as you know it.

A housing policy expert explains how federal government policies created the suburbs and the inner city.

Preston Brooks, Greg Gianforte, and the American tradition of disguising cowardice as bravery.

Chinese restaurants are now an American staple, but in the past some Americans tried to shut them down.

Pundits can't seem to define what exactly the term refers to. Turns out it was developed for a very particular historical moment.

Understanding the complex history of the Confederate flag.

States with homogenous populations spend more on the safety net than those with higher shares of minorities.

Career bureaucrats in the Trump administration are proving that bureaucrats can be dedicated to a cause other than themselves.

Kente serves as more than a pop of color at college graduations.

Lee should not be defined not only by his time as a Confederate general, but also by his actions after the war was over.

The fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline is part of a centuries-long indigenous struggle against dispossession.

Hillary Clinton is the most maligned presidential loser in history. What’s going on?

Many Americans could have gone either way during the Revolution.

The Long Hot Summer of 1967 was the inevitable result of forced duality.

A new look at the Declaration of Independence from 24 scholars across the country.

For talented black spellers in the 1960s, the segregated local spelling bee was the beginning of the long road to Washington, D.C.