Excerpts

Reconsidering the journalistic ethics of a New York Times reporter who chronicled the Manhattan Project from the inside.

Before Trump, one lobbyist’s pursuit of foreign cash and shady deals laid the groundwork for Washington’s corruption.

Contrary to popular conceptions, women were also instrumental to the spread and articulation of black nationalism.

On the 45th anniversary of the famous decision, Sarah Weddington reflects on what has – and hasn't – changed.

For unpopular presidents, the State of the Union is a minefield.

Putting Trump's approval rating in historical context.

A set of speech drafts suggests that Truman may not have fully understood the implications of dropping an atomic bomb on the city.

Did the bestselling self-help author do more harm than good for early patients with AIDS?

An illustrated history of urban renewal in Roanoke, Virginia.

Black Muslims have been an influential force in the prisoners' rights movement and criminal justice reform.

Women’s role in the 1920s KKK can teach us about racism today.

Talking sexism, ageism, and progress with Katha Pollitt.

Here's how the mystery of her true identity was solved.

The story of an underground abortion service that operated pre-Roe vs. Wade.

It wasn't some radical left-wing pipedream. It was moderate; and it worked.

Thomas Moss’ lynching, like many others in the South, was a punishment for becoming an economic competitor to whites.

The remarkable collection of sketches, drawings and watercolors left to us by a Civil War veteran.

The effort to repatriate the remains of thousands of Herero people slaughtered by German colonists at the turn of the century.

The western frontiers of national wellness culture.

Mapping historical photos from the New York Pubic Library.

How an appendix to an obscure government report helped launch a blockbuster and push back the possibility of atomic war.

Does the term clarify or confuse our understanding of capitalism today?

And anyway, agreement between the two parties has often masked serious problems.

President Trump is the embodiment of over 50 years of resistance to the policies Martin Luther King Jr. fought to enact.

From Civil War uniforms to Viking smelts, meet the people who bring history to life.

Clinton's memoir addresses the gendered discourse and larger feminist contexts of the 2016 presidential campaign.

How can adjacent neighborhoods in the same city be so drastically unequal?

An oral history of how Black Flag, Bad Brains, and other hardcore acts reclaimed punk from white supremacists.

For Meaghan Good, the disappeared are still out here, you just have to know where to look.

As King’s attention drifted to the problems of the urban north, his critiques came to focus on the economic system itself.

There is no figure in recent American history whose memory is more distorted than Martin Luther King Jr.

But it’s seriously dated. And there's another tradition he could draw on.

The Experimental City revisits the plan for a futuristic Minnesota city that would solve urban problems.

Leslie Gelb supervised the team that compiled the Pentagon Papers. He explains what Steven Spielberg's new film gets wrong.

Why so many of the people who quote Emma Lazarus’s Petrarchan sonnet miss its true meaning.

The designers of the quota system at least tried to hide their racism.

"Able-bodied” doesn't always mean “able to work.”

Thousands of priceless images, books, documents, and more are now at your fingertips.

SNCC staff photographer Danny Lyon recounts his experiences in the early days of the civil rights movement.

King was roundly denounced for his stances against the Vietnam War and injustices north of the Mason-Dixon line.

Ryan Zinke isn’t the first Interior secretary to attract controversy.

Elections in the late 1860s gave birth to real, if short-lived, interracial democracy—the likes of which America had never seen.

Fact-checking the lyrics of Miranda's new song.

"It's still white history. And no amount of casting people of color disguises the fact that they're erasing people of color from the actual narrative."

Keeping the Irish poor out of America helped shape our restrictive immigration policies.

Historian Thomas S. Kidd examines the tension between Benjamin Franklin's deism and his frequent religious rhetoric.

A biography of Stevie Nicks does little to dispel the magic.

Doctors then, as now, overprescribed the painkiller to patients in need, and then, as now, government policy had a distinct bias.

A new biography of Lucy Parsons makes it clear that the activist deserves attention apart from her more well-known husband.

Trump's language might be uniquely vulgar but his ideas are part of a long trend.