Excerpts

Its text and context don’t ensure an unlimited individual right to bear any kind and number of weapons by anyone.

Are a few bombastic speeches really enough to wash the bloodstains off Churchill’s racist hands?

It’s Andrew Johnson, not Andrew Jackson, who provides the best model for Trump’s collapsing presidency.

When an online news outlet goes out of business, its archives can disappear as well. The new battle over journalism’s digital legacy.

How much monopoly is too much monopoly?

How a demagogue resembles a typhoon, and why it matters to the future of the republic.

The footage offers a riveting account of American history, in the voices of those who lived it.

A former communist from Chicago wrote the song in the 1960s, decades before Trump turned it into an anti-immigrant fable.

A history lesson for attorney general Jeff Sessions.

A republic needs a legislature that can handle such tasks. We don’t have one.

‘The young Mexican American is tired of waiting for the Promised Land.’

A region that outsiders love to imagine but can’t seem to understand.

An animated excerpt of an article from W.E.B. Du Bois depicts the “double-consciousness of a dark body.”

Du Bois’ 1897 essay describes the “double consciousness” of African Americans who are “shut out from their world by a vast veil.”

"Hillbilly Elegy" has been used to explain the 2016 election, but its logic is rooted in a dangerous myth about race in Appalachia.

From William McKinley to Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump has plenty of precedent if he's looking for it.

Exaggerating the danger of the group only creates new problems.

A careful study of recent popular history books reveals a genre dominated by generals, presidents—and male authors.

From fee-based governance to the “friendships” between the rich and public officials, the 19th century practices we once banished are back.

How a farcical series of events in the 1880s produced an enduring and controversial legal precedent.

We may not be in the midst of a war today, but the progress of democracy in this country is still tied to the rights of its most vulnerable citizens.

The Alamo supposedly honors the courage of Anglos pitted against Mexican brutality. In fact, it is about slavery and emancipation.

Historians have the uncomfortable role of shattering people’s memories.

The rise of public education in America.

Is 2016 worse than 1348? And 1836? And 1919?

A dark moment in American history offers lessons for the present.

A new documentary explores the infamous 1968 dispute between William Buckley and Gore Vidal.

As Americans debated how the Civil War period is publicly commemorated, a battle over a related question was finally put to rest.

Two decades before the personal computer, a shy engineer unveiled the tools that would drive the tech revolution.

Our circumstances have changed a lot since early colonial times. Unfortunately, our thinking about climate hasn’t changed enough.

In the latter half of the twentieth century, American comedy just was Jewish comedy, tamped down to appease audiences.

To begin with, her formal name was Amonute.

What the First Lady could learn from the fashion show that was supposed to showcase America First fashion.

If the U.S. government is going to wage unending war, it should at least get the public on its side.

Instead of banning dangerous pesticides, the EPA is actually loosening the rules on who can use them.

Years after he integrated the MLB, Robinson publicly badgered John F. Kennedy on civil rights.

Conservatives backed bilingual education until it became a progressive cause.

Never before have administrations scaled down sites to the extent proposed by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.

Abandoning free trade doesn't just hurt the economy. It threatens peace and stability across the globe.

A new book, ‘Active Bodies,’ explores the history.

How a simple request became a bureaucratic nightmare.

The government shouldn’t subsidize porn, he argued.

Reflecting on the tremendous impact of "The Souls of Black Folk," on the 150th anniversary of Du Bois' birth.

Coal country still clings to the industry that was long its chief source of revenue and a way of life.

People in the audience thought the player who stole the base was playing a joke.

Comparing the methods of Oxford University in the U.K. with those of the University of Mississippi shows there’s much to learn.

In his travelogues, Woodson rhapsodized over what he saw as a love of democracy among hard-scrabble mountain settlers of both races.

Considering Du Bois' complex ideas on the role of black artists in the struggle against white supremacy.

Trump's insistence on national solidarity, rejection of globalism, and demand for total patriotism channel Teddy Roosevelt.

How pitch, tonality, and celebrity imitation have portrayed cluelessness.