Excerpts

How should the courts use history?

The Beatles released Sgt. Pepper at the exact moment that the world was ready to take a rock album seriously as art.

On the centenary of his birth, seeking the man behind the myth.

Did the Founders want us to be faithful to their faith?

The nation's first "colorblind" tax set the stage for over two centuries of systematic consolidation of white racial interests.

The Hatch Act was crafted in response to New Deal-era political maneuvering.

The Trump Administration can - and should - learn from that moment.

The 1850s were a turning point for globalization, from telegraphs to colonization.

It’s known as a modern-day hub of progressivism, but its past is one of exclusion.  

Two historians weigh in on President Obama's move to designate a national monument to Reconstruction in South Carolina.

From xenophobia to conspiracy theories, the Know Nothing party launched a nativist movement whose effects are still felt today.

How Depression-Era racial dynamics may have shaped our understanding of antebellum enslaved life.

The history of a myth.

Are we honoring all of our American heroes this Memorial Day?

What does the institution owe the descendants of slaves?

Many compare the rise of "Trumpism" to that of 1930s Fascism. More worthwhile might be an examination of antifascist resistance.

Is he crazy, or crazy like a fox?

A wealthy white lawyer has spent 16 years and millions of dollars turning the Whitney Plantation into a memorial to the nation's past.

Trump's election isn't cause for reassessing politics as we know it.

Writers like Rick Perlstein miss the ways in which Trump’s rise is a story of discontinuity.

Despite common belief, Washington, D.C. was not built on a swamp.

The story of water in the West, climate change, and the birth of modern environmentalism lies at the bottom of Lake Powell.

During the Great Depression, Americans found solace in history.

Cedric Robinson has a great deal to teach us about Trumpism and the significance of resistance in determining the future.

James Gordon Bennett Jr.'s most eccentric public service announcement.

In the half-decade before Roe v. Wade, respected religious leaders participated in a nationwide struggle to make abortion more accessible.

"Why could that one not have been worked out?"

Behind a quiet house museum are anti-abortion activists with a mission: to claim America’s most famous historical feminist as their own.

Throughout modern history, the millions forced to flee as refugees have felt Douglass' agony, and thought his thoughts.

Twenty-one historians explain which moments in history are closest to the Trump election - and what we can learn.

State lawmakers stand and face the families of four wrongly-convicted black men.

James Madison thought of a lot of good reasons to impeach a President. Members of Congress might want to consult his list.

The rise​ of mass incarceration in the early 1970s was fueled by white fear of black crime. But the fear of crime wasn’t confined to whites.

California lawmakers debate barring Communist party members from government jobs.

The passage of Medicare and Medicaid, nearly fifty years ago, was no less contentious than recent debates about Obamacare.

In the 19th century, Jackson broadened the electorate, but the self-righteousness of some Democrats impedes their efforts to do the same.

They’ll tell you it was abortion. Sorry, the historical record’s clear: It was segregation.

The meaning of the Confederate flag is best discerned in the words of those who bore it.

It’s a match made in heaven.

Some issues aren’t amenable to deal making; some principles don’t lend themselves to compromise.

Years before Stonewall, many clergy members were standing on the front lines for gay rights.

A new book outlines an epidemic of over-diagnosis and addiction.

All climate change deniers needed was one article to cast doubt on the science of global warming.

How efforts to bolster religious liberty set off a chain of unintended consequences.

A journalist who covered Nixon’s fall explains why the current scandal may be more of a national emergency.

A historian collecting runaway slave ads describes them as “the tweets of the master class.”

Even before United Airlines, a legacy of excessive force existed in transportation.

Would the Founders have protected people we execute now?

When the war was over, the developed world had little doubt that a nation’s future standing in the world was predicated on access to oil.

As the new administration seeks to fill a vacancy on the Court, a look back at the forgotten mid-19th century battles over the judiciary.