Excerpts

The August 1973 contretemps over President Nixon's bombing of Cambodia was a turning point in how the Supreme Court handles emergency applications.

Trump's tariffs echo centuries of global protectionism, but history and economics question their effectiveness and long-term value.

Only one cousin is in a position of power — and his family can only watch helplessly as he destroys much that they stood for.

Nixon’s 1973 firing of a Watergate prosecutor raised questions about executive power, accountability and the limits of the law.

Georgios Varouxakis reexamines when and why people began to conceptualize "the West."

Churches, city officials and activists assisted migrants fleeing the violent conditions created by U.S. proxy wars in El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala.

On a new biography of James Baldwin.

A street-level view of Rudy Giuliani’s transformation of the Big Apple.

The president’s latest criticism of museums is a thinly veiled attempt to erase Black history.

Frank Meyer’s journey took him from communist agitator to conservative kingmaker.

How a decision sparked by the death of one of the world’s biggest pop stars knocked the Billboard 200 out of alignment.

How the fabled Hollywood director confronted survivor’s guilt, the legacies of the Holocaust, and the paradoxes of Zionism.

DC’s crackdown is just the latest in a long war on being poor and disabled in public.

A landmark 1964 Supreme Court ruling protects the press from angry public officials filing lawsuits. It’s being targeted by President Donald Trump.

It wasn’t the music that drew them, but an intellectual celebrity: Frank Meyer.

During his lifetime, Crockett—who went by David, not Davy—shaped his own myth. In the 20th century, his legacy got a boost from none other than Walt Disney.

Attempts to end birthright citizenship thwart an originalist interpretation of the Constitution.

In the Embers series, historian M.G. Sheftall shares the stories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s last survivors and reveals why their testimony must endure.

If we want democracy to survive, we need a vision that’s going to be more compelling than the one the authoritarians are offering.

American special operators brought their tactics in the global war on terror back home.

If he wins the New York City mayoral election, Zohran Mamdani will not be in totally uncharted territory.

Donald Trump seems stuck in the 80s.

An oral history of the coverage: what the United States attempted to cover up.

While the events that led to the Jonestown massacre included tragedy, the life—and death—of one of its residents offers lessons on community and resilience.

In the darkest days of the Iraq War, the highly secretive Joint Special Operations Command emerged as one of the most influential institutions in government.

The emotional roller coaster that changed the course of the Civil Rights Movement.

“Horses were a part of the daily fabric of life for many enslaved Black people.”

This digital project explores Arab American History through the 1907 business directory titled Dr. Abdou’s Travels.

Abolitionists built a monument to liberty and free speech steps from Indepdence Hall in Philadelphia. Then a mob burned it to the ground.

Elbridge Ayer Burbank’s haunting paintings capture a likeness that was only ever real from the vantage point of a White man with a gun, canvas, or camera.

Once dismissed as passé, since recast as a secular saint, Baldwin’s true message remains more unsettling than readers in either camp recognize.

The 21st century American city was forged in the embers of the 1970s arson wave.

How meatpacking remained domestic.

A new biography shows that his life was more complex than his viral fame suggests.

To some, the fires lit in New York in the late seventies signaled rampant crime; to others, rebellion. But maybe they were signs of something else entirely.

In 1921, White rioters destroyed a beacon of Black prosperity and security. This is what happened, and why it still matters today.

On teaching in a red state, the silences in our history lessons, and all I never learned about my hometown.

The story of Lucky and his service with the U.S. Marines in the Pacific Theater.

Offshoots from the “Tree of Life” traveled from Mesopotamia to the Levant to the United States, beguiling everyone with their toothsome confections.

On the grim legacy of Ronald Reagan.

The Bureau for the Repression of Communist Activities, known for its blood-spattered record of torture and political killings, was backed by the CIA.

Far from being a new debate, the discussion over extending home rule to Washingtonians has been around as long as the District of Columbia itself.

For decades, US hostility towards Russia and continued NATO encroachment ever further into Eastern Europe have laid the groundwork for the current crisis.

He didn’t give the tech right new ideas—not really. What he gave them was permission.

Right after slavery ended in the United States, thousands of Black people, formerly enslaved by white slave holders in the South, flooded Washington, DC.

Do archivists have political motivations too?

In the 1950s, the CIA funded efforts to smuggle great works of literature into the Eastern Bloc.

Humans have long tried to understand a quicksilver quality that defies explanation.

Part of what defines Pittsburgh literature is the transcendent in the prosaic, the sacred in the profane. An intimation of beauty amid a kingdom of ugliness.

Exploring the correspondence of June Jordan and Audre Lorde, Marina Magloire assembles an archive of a Black feminist falling-out over Zionism.