Excerpts

An irresistible trend took hold 50 years ago, and we’re all paying the price.

Why all Americans benefit from higher education for those incarcerated.

On the making of a centuries-old obsession at the heart of American national identity.

How my great-grandfather invented himself at the end of Reconstruction.

Activists in Georgia have been re-enacting the infamous 1946 murders of two black men and their wives.

How a Los Angeles Times editor helped create the myth of the American West.

Not just in Riverside, but in all of the Inland Empire!

“It’s not just preserving seeds, it’s preserving our culture, our history, our way of life.”

The ever-shifting curve of shoreline and river is no match for the infinite, idealized straight line.

A smooth forehead suggests a hard heart.

Liberalism’s relationship to equality has, his­torically, been far from a warm embrace.

While going out on a date may seem like a natural thing to do these days, it wasn't always the case.

The long history of confusions, misconceptions, and miscalculations in the relationship between the US and Iraq, from 1979 to 2003.

Why the far right embraces foreign tyrants.

"Between the Temples" tackles the anxieties around cultural assimilation—and finds continuity among very different generations.

Should equality, instead of another political ideal, should be at the center of our politics?

Upon the 50th anniversary of the Chicano Moratorium, participants reflect back on the movement that changed their lives and L.A. culture forever.

Screwball comedies are beloved films, but for decades historians and critics have disagreed over what the genre is and which movies belong to it.

Why Marvin Greer spends his weekends playing the part of a slave at Civil War reenactments.

Instead of yesteryear’s dry and dusty lectures, science communicators are creating new and exciting ways to engage with science.

A new book on the famed 1920s court case traces a long-simmering culture war—and the fear that often drives both sides.

How research helps us understand the past to create a better future.

Past network efforts to address racism faded as uprisings stopped dominating headlines.

The skin and strength on display at Santa Monica’s Muscle Beach aggravated American fears of gender transgressions and homosexuality.

Black miners were intentionally erased from the record of the Hawk's Nest Tunnel Disaster. A new book reinserts them into the narrative.

In many Southern states, "Brown v. Board of Education" fueled decades of resistance to school integration.

A website with documents, maps, and essays about the lynchings that occurred in Texas between 1882 and 1945.

An elegiac retelling of rap's origins, "Hip-Hop Is History" also ends with a sense of hope.

Today’s battles over issues like gender nonconformity and reproductive rights have antecedents that have been lost or suppressed. What can we learn from them?

Seven scholars discuss the definition, nature, practice, and periodization of corruption in the United States.

According to authors of a new book on how Iran has coped with economic sanctions imposed by the U.S., no one does.

How Buffalo Bill’s Wild West brought scenes from the American West to audiences around the globe.

The key measure of a healthy economy has long been growth, yet if production and consumption expand at their current rate we risk the health of the planet.

First discovered in 1938, Teflon has been used for everything from helping to create the first atomic bomb to keeping your eggs from sticking to the pan.

Klaxon horns, once standard safety equipment, disappeared from the roads after World War I. But the tensions they exposed about urban noise still echo.

MAGA has been a largely white movement of non-urban people who seem to think that people unlike them are scary and that there is only safety in homogeneity.

Why were so many early European books laden with self-deprecation? Blame genre conventions.

Baldwin wrote with the knowledge that change would be hard and slow to achieve.

For God, politics, love, integrity, or a sense of ennui, film stars at the height of their fame have left the industry behind.

In the forty-eight years that she’s lived in the West Village, the owner of the iconic cookbook shop has never ordered delivery.

In 1964, he toured Africa and the Middle East on a journey that would both transform his outlook and reveal the limits of transnational solidarity.

Explore science fiction worlds from the last few decades – and what these fictional settings tell us about ourselves.

The supposed recluse constantly sent letters to friends, family, and lovers. What do they show us?

A long Euro-American tradition of genocide and ethnic cleansing imagined freeing a barren Palestine from Palestinian barbarity and heathenism.

At the fourth annual Hanford Journey, Yakama Nation youth, elders and scientists share stories about a land that is a part of them.

A grand strategy for a turbulent world.

Who can migrate to the US and make their home here? Who gets to drop US-made bombs, and who is expected to suffer them? These are not unrelated questions.

Over the centuries, the beloved treat has become an integral part of our national identity.

A look back at the men, women and machines that made America’s favorite treat possible.

On Hitler’s attempt to win Americans over to his cause.