Excerpts

How floods have united people of color from the Gulf Coast states for nearly a century.

The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs wields enormous power and is key to President Trump's deregulatory agenda.

Credit reporting companies' immense power and lack of transparency puts consumers at risk.

A review of "Divided We Stand: The Battle Over Women’s Rights and Family Values That Polarized American Politics."

Did Thomas Jefferson really believe, “That government is best which governs least?”

The new administration plans to bring back a committee that has tried over the years to guide policy—with mixed results.

The military’s focus on individual service members in the late years of Vietnam has created a permanent legacy

The story of one of the most effective and brutal spymasters in U.S. history, and the beginning of an infamous love affair with napalm.

The Supreme Court and non-unanimous juries.

His administration has made the moon a destination, not just a pit stop, on the way to Mars.

Four books contend with the lifting of the 108-year old curse.

In a region where symbols of the Confederacy are ubiquitous, an unprecedented memorial takes shape.

Evidence that the idiom could be 100 years older than was previously thought.

It turns out that deforestation and suburbanization – not evolution – are to blame for the tick-borne epidemic.

A meditation from 2007 on the connection between wildfire destruction and suburbanization in California.

A CIA operative informed headquarters that before he was shot, the Cuban revolutionary "never lost his composure."

Secrecy, shame, and sealed adoption records.

Memos on "aliases," sexuality, and The Blood Counters.

The history behind the photographs on Colin Kaepernick’s T-shirt.

On the uses and abuses of civil rights heroes.

Blame messy history for the gender imbalance bedeviling Silicon Valley.

Recovering black radicalism.

Columbus Day is here again -- along with the controversy over its namesake. How have earlier generations understood him?

Christopher Columbus was a narcissist.

It's worth remembering that the now-controversial holiday started as a way to empower immigrants and celebrate American diversity.

Judith Weisenfeld’s book, New World A-Coming, reinterprets the various religious movements among African Americans in the early twentieth century.

Italian Americans and the commemoration of Columbus.

Patterson Hood argues that Tom Petty achieved perfection in his songwriting... time and time again.

If not for three sparring Virginia delegates, Congress’s power to remove a president would be even more limited.

Why the “Founders’ Intent” doesn’t matter.

The ardent but flawed movement against World War I.

In 1995, the "Deep Space Nine" installment “Past Tense” stood out for its realistic, near-future vision of racism and economic injustice.

Blame the marketers.

Read at your own risk.

In the 1930s, the Germans were fascinated by the global leader in legal racism—the United States.

Lyndon Johnson wanted sweeping new gun control laws. Instead he got crumbs.

Rigid racial codes in the early 20th century gained the admiration not only of many American elites, but also of Nazi Germany.

Even as a child, Eugene Williams was not safe from the harm caused by the ways of northern racism.

Today's rhetoric about dependency and disaster relief echoes a conversation from more than a century ago.

How profit motives have driven two centuries of American gun laws.

Activists can’t persuade their contemporaries—they’re aiming at the next generation.

The fight for the First Amendment, on campuses and football fields, from the sixties to today.

The 1957 launch of Sputnik wasn’t necessarily the start of the US-Soviet space race that Americans think of today.

Following WWII, the birth control organization published illustrated pamphlets with authoritative guidance on family planning.

Centuries of economic inequality have left Southern politics ripe for insurgent outsiders.

When wealthy New Yorkers decided to build Central Park, they eliminated an egalitarian community known as Seneca Village.

It was defeated by the firearm lobby.

The real history of the Second Amendment.

The modern historical profession's purpose has changed drastically in the past century.

On Twitter's new 280-character limit.