Excerpts

Political polarization in the U.S. mirrors its spatial divide.

For most of our history, the U.S. government treated biracial Americans as if we didn’t even exist, but my family has stories to tell.

Ta-Nehisi Coates' latest book preaches political fatalism. But black activism has always believed in the possibility of change.

The very weird tale of how American board games used to teach you how to get to heaven, and later, how to make bank.

How a lurid 19th-century memoir of sexual abuse produced one of the ugliest features of American politics.

You can thank her for your retirement benefits.

In 1948, the GOP passed the third biggest tax cut in U.S. history. In the next election, they learned the devil is in the details.

King George's tax collectors abused police powers to fill his coffers. Sound familiar?

And what will happen if they don't start getting him right.

The complex combination of grievances that fueled the war had to do with taxes, class, and nationalism.

President Trump's tax plan may be "great", but it will likely not be truly transformative.

Noam Maggor’s new book captures how it took both sides of the American continent to revitalize the economy after the Civil War.

The news that a posh San Francisco street was sold for delinquent taxes exposes the deeper issue with America’s local revenue system.

The political theory of Trumpism.

The troubling embrace of the founder of American finance.

When covering the struggle against school segregation in its own backyard, the paper of record came up short.

Legislatures regularly interfere with local affairs. The reasons, according to research, will surprise you.

A profile of Hannah Mayer Stone, one of the key figures in the struggle to make contraception safe, effective, and widely available.

In 1887, African-American cane workers in Louisiana attempted to organize—and many paid with their lives.

Donald Trump's rise to power was fueled by the profits of predatory real estate ventures.

In an effort to awaken Americans to their own history, the Truman Administration conceived of a moving museum.

Her latest column suggests that harassment is a product of the sexual revolution. She can’t possibly believe that.

Republicans are again sprinting toward an economic cliff.

Jacob Glatstein’s 1930s Yiddish novel ‘Homecoming at Twilight’ foresaw the coming doom.

Why "Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl" by Harriet Ann Jacobs (1861), became a hit in Japan when it was published there in 2013.

The actor’s persona was inextricable from the toxic culture of Cold War machismo.

At Prospect Hill, people came from as far as Liberia for an unlikely gathering that led to a scene of visible emotion – with ‘a lot to talk about.'

John W. W. Zeiser reviews Peter Bagge's graphic biography "Fire!! The Zora Neale Hurston Story."

100 years ago, it was associated more with the mystical practices of the Orient than with middle-class women in stretchy pants.

The Platters, the Flamingos, and other pioneering performers share stories of divided audiences and harrowing violence.

Tracing the connection between a ubiquitous paper product and the women’s liberation movement.

Small businesses enjoy an iconic status in modern capitalism, but what do they really contribute to the economy?

What three seminal books from 1967 can teach us about fighting racism in the Trump era.

An obscure archive reveals the science—and art—behind combat culture.

The case hinges on whether its display is to honor local history or Christianity.

In his later years, the famous writer surrounded himself with a bevy of adoring adolescents.

The Internet was built by public institutions — so why is it controlled by private corporations?

Does our approach to the First Amendment need to change in the wake of this summer's violence in Charlottesville?

Few who are memorialized in stone could fully pass moral muster today. Is that a problem?

Women are rising. Will they be able to create lasting change?

One film fan's struggle to reconcile the things she loves with the things she knows to be true.

Two writers — one black, one white — journey to Selma, Alabama, in search of "Southern heritage." This is their dialogue. 

Drew Carolan captured the mien of a subculture centered on midafternoon expressions of anger and community.

Trumpism emerged from a haze of delusion, denial, pride, and cruelty—not as a historical anomaly, but as a profoundly American phenomenon.

Amid all the stories about harassment and abuse, there’s been hardly any discussion about how we got here.

How the U.S. Army's antebellum camel experimentation paved the way for the illicit trafficking of enslaved Africans.

What does the Klan of the 1920s have to teach us about the resurgence of organized bigotry in the Trump era?

Since the 1950s, disparities along class and racial lines have defined the nation's drug policy.

How audience measurement became central to the creative and commercial development of television.

Unraveling the connections between public health and civil rights in 1960s New Orleans.