Excerpts

America’s path has been contested since its founding, and realizing the promise of liberty required generations of struggle.

In the midst of the Great Depression, one CIO union used the new administrative state to influence legislation on behalf of people considered outcasts.

In "Counterrevolution," Melinda Cooper reads the 1970s economic crisis as an elite revolt rather than proof of the New Deal order’s unsustainability.

The novelist's aestheticizing impulse contrasts with the relentless seriousness of his observations and critiques of American society.

When the Minnesota’s Farmer-Labor Party merged into the Democratic machine, its populist energies were chewed up and spat out.

How an obsessive hatred of immigrants and people of color and deep-seated fears about the empowerment of women led to the Klan’s rule in Indiana.

Despite having their citizenship withheld before the war, Chinese American women in the Bay Area made significant contributions to the wartime labor force.

What the failed Southern labor movement teaches us about the rightward shift in US politics.

Stephen Bright and Bryan Stevenson defended the abolition of capital punishment at a moment when political support for that movement reached its nadir.

From white supremacists to black activists, readers have sought moral legitimacy in Milton’s epic poem.

Carson pioneered a new style of late-night hosting—relaxed, improvisatory, risk-averse, and inscrutable.

A liberalism that divides humanity into a master class and a slave class deserves an asterisk as “white liberalism.”

Stephen Vincent Benét’s lost epic “John Brown’s Body” envisions a nation sutured together after the Civil War, but fails to reckon with the war’s causes.

Congress's role in shaping policies like the Affordable Care Act and exonerating Port Chicago sailors is often overlooked, overshadowed by the president.

In the wake of the September 11 attacks, evangelical American missionaries followed military tanks into Afghanistan and Iraq to convert Muslims.

Where conservatives may seek to conserve their democratic systems, reactionaries by their nature seek to weaken or abolish them.

In Wilson’s chivalric framework, women were required to be submissive precisely so that men could protect the weaker sex.

It’s not whom you’d want to get a beer with, but whom you’d want to watch getting a beer.

John Rankin, minister and fierce abolitionist, is a man worth remembering in our moment.

Hervey Cleckley wanted to treat the most overlooked psychiatric patients. Instead his work was used to demonize them.

Shifting voting patterns suggest it’s possible, but only if they persist through subsequent elections.

How we calculate inflation has always been a subject of debate. Small changes that might seem trivial lead to enormous changes in how well-off we think we are.

Those who draw a line from today to that infamous historical moment when democracy slid into authoritarianism are missing a key difference.

On being defeated.

Whose side is the war correspondent on?

Walking needs no publicist. The simplest, most accessible form of exercise has been around since humans first foraged and traveled on the ground.

Often, the proper scope of the First Amendment can be determined only by considering both text and context.

In assessing the rise of the global anti-democracy movement, the United States must look inward as well as outward.

Two new books explore the messy complexities of immigration—from the era of Lincoln to Irish New York.

Celebrating the composer’s 150th birthday, at a festival in Bloomington, Indiana.

AT&T’s early leaders used PR to sway public opinion, casting their monopoly as a public service and obscuring its political roots.

In the 1920s, advertisers tried to convince women to exercise their political power not only at the ballot box but also in the store.

A new historical study finds that Congress’s authority to investigate crime is “indispensable” to the system of checks and balances.

The malice test is the result of judicial activism and should be rejected by a Court that understands its task as the discovery, not the invention of law.

Hurricane Helene has revived urgent questions about the politics of land — and tourism — in Appalachia.

The summer sport is facing big questions about how it will adapt.

A 1950s mass deportation campaign shows that abuse and dehumanization are intrinsic to immigrant detention.

Considering the impact of the 1959 earthquake that shook our most famous national park.

Eight years into the fascism debate, few skeptics seem to be willing to admit that they were wrong.

In 1952, news stations combined two new technologies—the TV and the computer—to forever transform how voters experience election night.

Getting lost and found in the Bob Dylan archives.

Calls for Covid-19 memorials echo Pericles' Athenian moratorium, prompting reflection on the appropriateness of commemoration for ongoing crises.

Women on the homefront planned future homes with scrapbooks, blending wartime duty with dreams of postwar prosperity and modern comforts.

American expansionism goes beyond territory.

Seaweed and its connection to faith and abolitionism.

What American workers have lost since 1974 — and how some are getting it back.

Dr. Bronner blends spirituality, ethical consumerism, and social activism, aiming to support both community and environmental causes through “All-One” values.

Before women could vote, they sold cookbooks like ‘The Woman Suffrage Cook Book’ to raise money for their cause.

This year’s momentous vote strangely resembles one of the most consequential elections in American history.

Two recent books about our immigration system reveal its long history of exploiting vulnerable individuals for financial gain.