Excerpts

The melee, the mayhem, the metal chairs.

How history shaped the modern U.S. Border Patrol agent.

Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso” is one of several recent hits bringing back the genre that never got a name.

On the construction of America's new capital city.

Compared to their 1960s forerunners, today’s young radicals seem far less interested in moving towards responsible adulthood.

Transgender people's reactions to watching oral histories of the legacy of a 1966 riot in the Tenderloin that was nearly lost to history.

A new exhibition seeks to understand the young soldiers who came ashore at Normandy.

Why introductory economics courses continued to teach zombie ideas from before economics became an empirical discipline.

Tracing the family history of some of today's most popular celebrities.

The many strategies foreign governments have used to shape American policy in their favor.

No, really.

What happened in 1970 after Richard Nixon was told, “I doubt that there would be any problem of student demonstrations in Tennessee.”

Detaining migrants is pointless. American history proves it.

The medical profession saw nothing wrong with offering a cocaine-laced cola to white, middle-class consumers. Selling it to Black Americans was another matter.

In Jack London’s novel, Martin Eden personifies debates still raging over the role and purpose of education in American life.

On Ana Raquel Minian’s “In the Shadow of Liberty.”

We owe at least part of the 2008 financial crisis to Ayn Rand's philosophy of objectivism.

The legacy of the Immigration Act of 1924 and the launching of the Border Patrol, which inaugurated the most restrictive era of US immigration until our own.

Starting in the 1960s, more and more Hollywood films depicted an increasingly violent and alienated American society quickly losing its mind.

If it weren’t for the young urban professionals of the 1980s, we’d never have MAGA.

An essential new volume collects accounts of Japanese incarceration by patriotic idealists, righteous firebrands, and downtrodden cynics alike.

When he reflected on the consequences of empire, Conrad saw no logic or teleology. He saw mayhem. There is no surety in "Heart of Darkness."

All that’s past isn’t necessarily present.

A look inside an enduring home for women 100 years after its doors first opened to residents.

On America's iconic monuments and the idea of national remembrance.

How do fandoms gain their names?

Waiting for the start of the American Civil War in Canada and the Caribbean.

The case of Robinson and Roberts v. Wheble provides legal historians with the most thorough documentation of an eighteenth-century trademark dispute.

Waverly Woodson treated men for 30 hours on Omaha Beach, but his heroism became a casualty of entrenched racism, bureaucracy and Pentagon record-keeping.

The anti-vaccine movement has gained ground because the public health community has denied the truth about measles.

A new book explores the Communist Party's western base and its alliance with the labor movement.

On the TransAm Trucking case, legal reasoning, and the Fugitive Slave Act.

The City University of New York has long stood at once for meritocratic uplift and for civil disobedience.

The company found its own toxic compounds in human blood—and kept selling them.

Insulin transforms a sick body. It also has the potential to reconstitute our political economic realities.

On the fragile facade of republicanism in 19th century America.

Eugene Debs ran for president from prison. His former bellwether county — and museum — both hold lessons for Trump’s campaign.

Researching the Sandinista Revolution from Nicaraguans’ perspective.

A century ago, debates about the failed Child Labor Amendment turned on larger issues about work, childhood, and the role of government.

Border Patrol has abused its authority and mistreated migrants in countless ways. Yet its role as the frontline force in asylum exclusion has only grown.

In its reexamination of narratives about the expropriation of Native land, Michael Witgen’s work changes how Native people are in the arc of American history.

State-level rollbacks to child labor protections show the need for a constitutional amendment introduced 100 years ago.

In 1936, the Czech track star Zdeněk Koubek became world-famous after undergoing surgery so that he could live openly as a man.

A virtual tour of "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl."

Though best known for his dedication to civil rights as Chief Justice, Earl Warren was a key figure behind Japanese internment in California - and stood by it.

Camps once sold a story about social improvement. Now we just can’t conceive of an unscheduled moment.

Fairly applying the rule of law to powerful politicians provides the stability that enables the U.S. to thrive politically and economically.

When the personal and professional lives of Hawai'i Congresswoman Patsy Mink collided.

The long-polluted Anacostia bisects the District’s Potomac waterfront, segregating the majority-Black Southeast from the rest of the capital city.

Judith Jones edited culinary greats such as Julia Child and Edna Lewis—and identified the pleasure at the core of traditional “women’s work.”