Excerpts

A century after the guns fell silent, the United States risks replicating the errors of the past.

A hundred and fifty years after its ratification, some of its promises remain unfulfilled—but one day it may still be interpreted anew.

If we want to avoid nuclear war, we'd better start imagining it again.

The food pages of newspapers were probably some of the first feminist writing many women read.

"The Best of Everything" outlined the dynamics and the costs of sexual harassment, decades before anyone talked openly about it.

The tension between nationalist ambitions and republican principles goes all the way back to our nation’s founding.

Citizens pledge their allegiance to a nation that reciprocates with a pledge of allegiance to them. What does that look like?

In navigating lives of privation and brutality, enslaved people haggled, often daily, for liberties small and large.

Hannah Arendt’s conception of human rights has much to say to our contemporary moment.

The Court got it right—but it's not a conclusion we should be entirely comfortable with.

In 1868, black activists had already been promoting birthright as the basis of their national belonging for nearly half a century.

A review of Stephen Brumwell's most recent book.

Neoliberalism set out not to demolish the state, but to create an international order strong enough to override democracy in the service of private property.

In 1961, two African-American men decided to go swimming at a whites-only Nashville pool. In response, the city closed all its public pools — for three years.

A century ago, the commonwealth's leaders weren't circumspect about their motives.

Immigration from Mexico is actually decreasing.

Tim Berners-Lee has seen his creation debased by everything from fake news to mass surveillance. But he’s got a plan to fix it.

Today's debate over sanctuary cities embodies a much longer debate in America over federalism.

Whatever the Trump administration does with Environmental Protection Agency, its urban legacy is clear.

When residents of the U.S. came to see Latin Americans as partners in a shared revolutionary experiment.

The left is turning its back on the Revolution. Here's why that's a mistake.

What Dred Scott teaches us about thwarting bad law.

A new book asks: Can the surplus of capitalist exploitation be used to aid those on whose backs this surplus is generated?

Before the Civil War, many Southern leaders hoped to expand slavery even beyond the nation's borders.

George Washington gave orders to destroy towns and take prisoners in Sullivan’s Campaign, but her story lives on.

The story of the Bald Knobbers is a terrifying parable about what happens when government fails and violence reigns.

Should white artists be allowed to depict black suffering?

A conservative pundit questioned the prevalence of Dixiecrats switching to the GOP. Historian Kevin Kruse accepted the challenge.

For people of color watching over their shoulder, the fear of police interference harkens back to a historical moment with a much-too-benign label.

Review of The Framers' Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution, by Michael J. Klarman.

In a new book, a historian explores the American fascination with conversion, and its costs. 

Philadelphia native Gene Demby was 4 years old when city police dropped a bomb on a house of black activists in his hometown.

Wild talk, elite confusion, working-class cheers — Donald Trump’s divisive presidential campaign comes straight from the master’s playbook.

America put drastically more people in prison over the past few decades than at any time in the nation's history.

The story of a spiritual visionary who in 1884, set out to create a colony of orphans in the New Mexico desert.

How the US military figured out how to make self-stable cheese ... and helped invent Cheetos to boot.

After the Civil War, African Americans in the South transformed Independence Day into a celebration of their newly won freedom.

The 1776 Declaration was only the first. What we learn from the long history of splinter constitutions, manifestos, and secessions that followed.

The Founding Fathers were more interested in limiting democracy than securing and expanding it.

Democrats don’t think America lives up to liberal democratic ideals. Republicans don’t think Americans need to.

A primary source set and teaching guide created by educators.

The leaders of the Revolutionary War — and their vision for the nation — were far from revolutionary.

A Dallas restaurant owner blended tequila, ice and automation. America has been hungover ever since.

Simeon Wade describes visiting Death Valley with Michel Foucault in 1975.

Native Americans' fights for environmental protection should not be seen as battles against progress.

The end of an era.

The two men owned slaves — but at vastly different moments in American history.

The city isn't rushing to put it back up.

Then the factory closed and the union crumbled.

But the Vermont senator’s political revolution depends on white America, too.