Excerpts

Jimmy Carter, skeptical of NASA's shuttle, saved it with funding despite delays and opposition. His Voyager message carries hope deep into space.

Team photographs at a nuclear weapons factory offer a glimpse into the mundanity and materiality of the bomb.

As a worker in the 1970s, I looked forward to a Jimmy Carter administration. By the end of his term in office, I felt betrayed.

He tackled segregation in the nation’s public colleges and fraud in student-aid programs, and established the Department of Education.

As President, he told us that we needed to shift to solar power. We should have listened to him then.

Highest-level national security documents reveal a tough-minded, detail-oriented president.

Earth First! was founded in 1980 to defend wildlife and wilderness areas more directly and uncompromisingly than most environmental groups.

If ever a book ought not to be judged by its cover, Edgar Allan Poe’s debut collection, "Tamerlane and Other Poems," is that book.

During the Great Depression, financial elites translated European fascism into an American form that joined high capital with lower middle-class populism.

It radically shifted the way the world looked at the environment, but created a wave of misinformation we’re still dealing with today.

NYC subway etiquette reflects socio-economic divides.

Chinese immigrants sacrificed to create America's first transcontinental railroad. Its completion contributed to a backlash that led to immigration clampdown.

How gang-nail plates led to bigger homes.

Since George Floyd’s murder, some white allies seek ways to fight racial inequality. Detroit’s 1960s "racially parallel organizing" offers insights.

One speech permanently influenced American diplomacy—and not for the better.

We must stand by the principles of the open society, pluralism, freedom, and mutual toleration.

UnitedHealthcare, the health insurer whose CEO was murdered, has spent decades fighting and winning political battles to maintain the for-profit health system.

On the medallic art of the Gilded Age.

To understand discourse around “Christian nationalism,” look no further than the abolitionist hailed by many on the left.

Ed Hardy's historic tattoo parlor is closing. A lot more than that stands to be lost.

A sweeping new history chronicles a century of unprecedented economic progress driven by markets and innovation.

The Alien Enemies Act, first approved in the late 1700s, was last used during World War II to identify particular foreign nationals living in the US.

It's crucial to understand the real history behind claims that men are being marginalized.

A new collection of essays by David Montgomery shows how he used labor history as a means of grappling with the largest questions in American history.

Understanding the reemergence of the Ku Klux Klan in the early twentieth century gives insight into the roots of today’s reactionary activists and policymakers.

“The world didn’t give It, but the world can’t take It away.”

Socialist legislator Zohran Mamdani is running for New York City mayor against a corrupt, unpopular mayor. Morris Hillquit did the same thing a century ago.

In 1973, the Christmas Bird Count formed the basis for a press freedom case that centered on the impacts of DDT.

The Washington Post has found more than three times as many deaths as the U.S. government documented in its investigation of Indian boarding schools.

Second-wave feminists meant business—but they had a lot of fun at it, too.

Donald Trump’s 2024 win, echoing the Gilded Age, highlights America’s volatile, close elections, partisan divides, and structural barriers shaping politics.

The politician presents a riddle for historians. He was a beloved populist but also a crackpot conspiracist. Were his politics tainted by his strange beliefs?

A new biography explores the American roots of Meir Kahane's far-right ideology — and how the U.S. Jewish establishment embraced his beliefs.

A story of intrigue and power involving union organizers, Black laundry workers, the Mafia, and the FBI in 1980s Detroit.

Instead of trying to recapture working class votes, Democrats should be focused on building the kind of economy they need to expand the political map.

The week between Christmas and the new year offered a rare opportunity for enslaved people to reclaim their humanity.

An enemies list isn’t a weapon against ‘the Deep State.’ It was a tool Richard Nixon used to create a deep state of his own.

According to conventional wisdom, the last quarter century of elections has proved that most of the country leans conservative. It all started with a map.

Construction workers pooled their wages to erect the first one. Their bosses co-opted the gesture, transforming it into today’s consumer spectacle.

A new book considers the challenges of controlling the commercialization of college sports.

Our country has a long history of admiring particular acts of violence.

Can the Clinton campaign slogan chart a path forward for Democrats? Its history tells another story.

The story of credit cards is the story of industry versus regulators. Industry won.

Jack Chick and the origins of the 1980s “Satanic Panic."

One woman’s quest to rescue Boley, Oklahoma.

The Year 2000 computer problem continues to nag at us 25 years later.

When the 1930 Hays Code banned pregnancy in film, birds took over the business of birth.

Belle da Costa Greene, a brilliant archivist, buried her own history.

The New Deal-era creation of “Bill of Rights Day” obscures the real nature and guardrails of American liberty.

By universalizing their own economic history, Western observers have used the past to portray African economic culture as backward and inadequate.