Excerpts

How did truckers nudge the American economy toward deregulation?

A glimpse inside the Alabama State House suggests that the civil rights movement may have reached its end.

#MeToo must go beyond the demand for punishment.

The congressman who Alabamians later complained "made them the laughing stock of the Union."

Men accepted women’s rise to prominence, but used sexual coercion to maintain control.

The current level of fire danger is so high that the U.S. Forest Service has described them using the color purple, to signify “extreme.”

Why fiery crosses, white robes, and the American flag were seized upon by the 1920s Klan in its campaign for white nationalism.

Why French revolutionaries, in need of an image to represent the all important “will of the people”, turned to the thunderbolt.

W.E.B. Du Bois on the beauty of sorrow songs.

They're the hunters, not the hunted.

A new report says the sugar industry pulled the plug on evidence linking sugar consumption to heart disease.

Inspired by Trump's election and his anti-immigrant policies, a group of scholars compiled this collection on the idea of "sanctuary."

We often forget that Nixon took decidely liberal stances on welfare, healthcare, and universal basic income.

If you look hard enough, you can almost find ideological consistency in the Republicans’ breathtaking tax bill.

The myth of the “dependent” poor.

Decades after civil rights laws overruled policies that starved non-white neighborhoods of investment, deep disparities linger.

And why it was so hard to see it coming.

From the Stamp Act of 1765 to the Tea Party Movement, how have – and haven't – American attitudes about taxes changed over time?

The history of Time's 'Person of the Year' exemplifies the problem that led to this year's winner.

Archivists are working to document our chaotic, opaque, algorithmically complex world—and in many cases, they simply can’t.

We might be better off if we knew a little more – or a little less – about her actual life.

The nation's first African-American president was a disaster for black wealth.

Land redistribution could have served as the primary means of reparations for former slaves. Instead, it did exactly the opposite.

A lifelong fan reflects on how sexual exploitation is part of rock's DNA.

The notion that a government’s chief obligation is getting stuff done is a fairly recent arrival on the historical scene.

Cold War politics empowered democracy — and dictatorship.

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.