Excerpts

The roots of the influential institution at the center of the Trump-Russia investigation.

Former slaves claimed the president came to plantations disguised as a beggar or a peddler, telling them they’d soon be free. 

Two former anti-doping professionals think the fight against performance-enhancing drugs is doing more harm than good.

The celebration is steeped in a history of racial politics no number of floats could easily erase.

The February 1968 killing of three student protesters in Orangeburg, SC marked a turning point in the black freedom struggle.

The pandemic was the most lethal global disease outbreak since the Black Death. What were people thinking at the time?

The arsenic-laden pages of "Shadows from the Walls of Death" should not be touched without gloves.

A pair of 1959 films brought "Smell-o-vision" into movies.

The religious profile of young adults today differs dramatically from that of older Americans.

A new campaign by historians seeks to bring recognition to the site where the 20th president was shot.

Newly discovered league memo from 1966 anticipates controversies over the Colin Kaepernick protest.

Medicine’s dark history helps explain why black mothers are dying at alarming rates.

Were the founders really warning us about Trump, or were they just playing politics, too?

Now all but forgotten, a group of New York socialites was instrumental to the success of the suffrage movement.

A history of Independence Hall offers an example of how old buildings and open spaces are not always ripe sites for development.

The president’s decision to attend the opening of a new civil rights museum in Jackson has sparked protests.

Some police are becoming more vocal advocates of change. But the project of ending racial bias in policing is a decades-old one.

A spate of new books explores the composition and motivations of the demographic that has been credited with electing Trump.

An exclusive excerpt from the forthcoming oral history of HBO’s beloved drama.

The resurgence of the debate over the Sage of Monticello's legacy: Is Jefferson the ultimate patriot or ultimate hypocrite?

Trump's plans for the federal workforce sound reasonable, but they would actually undo a century of reforms.

Two new biographies look at the life of Inez Burns, an uncompromising and extravagant turn-of--the-century woman.

Determined researchers are finally drawing the lines between higher education and America's original sin.

Barlow was a poet, a cowboy, a philosopher, and the internet's staunchest ally.

Inside the desperate fight to keep old TVs alive.

American unions have struggled to make substantial gains since the ’70s, but not for the reasons historians think.

Why? Because there's very little known about the thousands of victims who survive deadly shootings.

And how they helped seal America’s fate in Vietnam.

An interactive timeline recounts the movement to end sexual harassment.

Fifty years ago, the January 1968 battle laid bare the way U.S. leaders had misled the public about the war in Vietnam.

Trump has revived an age-old debate about why some people choose race over class—and how far they will go to protect the system.

150 years after Yosemite opened to the public, the park's indigenous inhabitants are still struggling for recognition.

Trump’s Muslim ban was not just an abberation: US citizenship has long been predicated on whiteness as it was understood in 1790.

You might be surprised to learn that this sport where women now shine was initially seen as solely the purview of male athletes

A new book says the conflict began in the late 19th century and subsumed even World War II as our defining event.

The struggle over Shreveport's Confederate monument converges with talk about a national anthem protest by high-schoolers.

In 1986, William Shatner told a roomful of spoof Trekkies to "get a life."

No other nation sentences people to die in prison for offenses committed as minors.

In 1968, a retired colonel warned that urban insurrections could produce “scenes of destruction approaching those of Stalingrad.”

The cheap monthly publications that flooded rural homes offered more than just advertising—they also provided companionship.

When repairing tearing from birth, some providers put in an extra stitch “for daddy,” with painful consequences for women.

2,000 years ago, people domesticated these plants. Now they’re wild weeds. What happened?

A new study suggests that high school students lack a basic knowledge of the role slavery played in shaping the United States.

A historian reveals the crucial role that he played in helping Daniel Ellsberg leak the documents to journalists.

Four decades ago, Raymond Broshears armed his disciples to keep LGBT people safe from violent homophobes.

Chisholm, the first black woman elected to Congress, constantly defied those who tried to constrain her due to race and gender.

It’s beginning to feel like the 1980s all over again.

An early use of the spoonerism "bass-ackwards" turns up in an 1840s letter by a young Abraham Lincoln.

The term "fake news" dates back to the end of the 19th century.

The Reverend Dr. Henry Highland Garnet may be the most famous African American you never learned about.