Excerpts

Nearly 45 years after they put the female superhero on the cover of Ms. magazine's first issue, the players behind the cover consider its impact.

The word is two centuries old.

How the “Greatest Show on Earth” enthralled small-town crowds and inspired shopping malls

Trump University follows a long line of for-profit schools that have faced accusations of dishonesty.

The menu of Emancipation Day.

Eighty years ago, striking workers in Chicago were shot down by police. It transformed the course of labor rights in the US.

Read an excerpt from TIME's special edition about Alexander Hamilton.

How a little too much punch changed the course of the Confederacy.

Once upon a time, the EPA had a golden age.

What would happen if some crazed gunman or terrorist massacred Congress? We don’t really know — and that’s bad news for our democracy.

Making history more appealing to the public may come at a cost.

Woodrow Wilson arrived at the White House determined to eliminate the gains African-Americans made during Reconstruction.

For several decades, the term was a fixture of newspaper headlines and campaign speeches. Then something changed.

Mercy Otis Warren used her wit to agitate for independence.

How the Nobel Prize–winning economist James M. Buchanan shaped today’s antigovernment politics.

Before we can face slavery, learn about it and acknowledge its significance to American history, we must dispel the myths surrounding it.

Today's diners would surprise a 1940s patron. These restaurants were once vulgar boy’s clubs before becoming today's family-friendly establishments.

The history of the comic-book superhero's creation seven decades ago has been hidden away — until now.

A new gallery provides a rare look inside the 75-year history of the agency’s mapping unit.

The Infectious Texts project is the compilation of 41,829 issues of 132 newspapers from the Library of Congress.

Maps from 1630 to the present show how the city — once an 800-acre peninsula — grew into what it is today.

Dozens of vessels that brought gold-crazed prospectors to the city in the 19th century still lie beneath the streets.

A huge collection of “persuasive maps” — newly available online — reveals how our trust in cartography can be used to sway us.

The complicated story behind the invention of sound recording.

Anne Gorsuch Burford — the mother of Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch — cut its budget by a quarter and its workforce by 20 percent.

How Silicon Valley coopts history for its own autocratic ends.

The magazine's founders swore it was anti-communist, but that wasn't enough to convince skittish advertisers to stick with it.

A new biography of Andrew Jackson recounts a bloody history, and reveals disturbing parallels between the 1830s and the Trump era.

Buying a necktie for your dad is a stereotypical way to celebrate Father's Day, but it's in keeping with the holiday's history.

Why the president, who appears allergic to the logic of bureaucracy, keeps getting defeated by that humblest of technologies, the office memorandum.

In the 1840s and 1850s, it was all too common.

How Malcolm McClean's shipping containers conquered the global economy by land and sea.

The Espionage Act turns 100 today. It helped destroy the Socialist Party of America and quashes free speech to this day.

He risked his life to liberate his family and became a legend in the process.

A new book re-traces the origins of the 19th-century KKK, which began as a social club before swiftly moving to murder.

For nearly a century, American tax policy has privileged the investor class and advanced the accumulation of white wealth.

Expansionism, and sending the military into others' lands, is a critical component of American republicanism, and a factor in independence itself.

New Orleans shouldn't have removed its Robert E. Lee statue.

What historian William Appleman Williams taught us about foreign policy and the good society.

It happened long before a special prosecutor was appointed to investigate the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. 

The legend of the Confederate leader’s heroism and decency is based in the fiction of a person who never existed.

A forgotten history of the largest slave auction ever on American soil.

Before New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu made his celebrated speech, a grassroots movement forced the city to take down its monuments to white supremacy.

A century and a half after the Civil War, Mayor Mitch Landrieu asked his city to reexamine its past — and to wrestle with hard truths.

It started with a hatred of crony capitalism.

The surprising persistence of Henry David Thoreau.

Why hasn't Richmond faced the same controversies as New Orleans or Charlottesville?

It’s treated as an all-purpose symbol of evil, not a series of historical events to be reckoned with.

Only if we face the painful lies we tell ourselves about the past can we hope to overcome what's happening now.

Urban elites with a fancy hobby teamed up with rural farmers in a movement that transformed the country.