Excerpts

Curated stories from around the web.
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Uncle Sam gestureing "Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil,"

How the US Military Ditched Merit

A military consumed by identity politics threatens the integrity of the republic.
Crowd marching on Wall Street.

Nationalize the Banks

Grassroots support for public banks early in the 20th century revealed the popularity of socialism-aligned economic ideas.
Sen. Joe McCarthy confers with Roy Cohn during a hearing of the House Un-American Activities Committee.

A Not-So-Hostile Takeover

Long before the rise of Trump, the American conservative mainstream enjoyed a complex partnership with the Far Right.
A sign that reads "In God We Trust" over the seal of the United States.

Mainline Protestants and Christian Nationalism

Exploring the role mainline Protestants have played in promoting the idea of America as a Christian country.
Governor Philip La Follette signing the old-age pension bill in Madison, Wisconsin in 1931.

The Golden Age of Wisconsin Socialism

At its peak in the 1920s and early ’30s, the Socialist Party in Wisconsin used confrontational tactics and nonsocialists alliances to make legislative advances.
Cover of "A Great Disorder" by Richard Slotkin, depicting the outline of the United States made out of cracked stone, overlaid with the American flag.

American Mythology

Is the United States a prisoner of its own mythology?
Illustration of the Constitution, with the hand of a Founder writing with a feather, and the other side a 21st century hand writing with a pen.

The Supreme Court’s Originalists Are Fundamentally Wrong About History

The Founders didn’t believe the Constitution had a fixed meaning. So why do so many of the justices?
U.S. Constitution

This Book Could Change the Way Conservatives Read the Constitution

“Against Constitutional Originalism” by historian Jonathan Gienapp could fundamentally reorient how we understand America’s founding.
Sakinah Ahad Shannon.

The Story of Sakinah Ahad Shannon, an Early Hero of Abortion Liberation

Sakinah discovered Chicago’s Abortion Counseling Service, better known as Jane, because she wanted to help a friend. Then she became an essential part of it.
A monkey listening to a radio with headphones.

The Scopes Trial and the Two Visions of US Democracy

A new history revisits “the Trial of the Century” and its legacy in contemporary politics.
A frayed and torn American flag flying on a flag pole.

Farewell, the American Century

Rewriting the past by adding in what's been left out.
A collage of advertisements for lithium and lithium water.

The Truth About Lithium Might Never Come Out

Longevity enthusiasts are microdosing a 19th-century cure-all. Are they onto something?
Advertisement promoting cocaine toothache drops, 1889.

An Undulating Thrill

Once lauded as a wonder of the age, cocaine soon became the object of profound anxieties. What happened?
Essay entitled "America," full of editorial markings.

America Is Not America Yet

On American history and the history of the word “America.”

How John Lewis Put a Legacy of Heroism to Use

As the civil-rights era receded, his personal heroism loomed larger. But movement politics didn’t easily translate into party politics.

The Electoral College and Slavery

It's easy to get this one wrong.
An inaccurate Spanish map from the 1500s of the southeast of the United States.

To Understand Mississippi, I Went to Spain

The forces that would shape my home state’s violent history were set in motion by a 480-year-old map made by a Spanish explorer.
A still from "It's a Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" of two children in a pumpkin patch at night.
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How the Great Pumpkin Became Great

The origins of Linus's pumpkin deity, who "rises out of the pumpkin patch and flies through the air and brings toys to all the children in the world."
A drawing of an angry, long-haired cat holding a sign that reads "Vote for Shes."
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A Purrrrfect Political Storm

Crazy cat ladies have come to dominate this election season. It’s hardly the first time.

An Early Case For Reparations

Two new books tell the stories of people kidnapped and sold into slavery. One of them sued successfully.
Political cartoon of clothed animals and Anthony Comstock bathing clothed, and cowering at underwear in a store window.

The History and Legacy of Anthony Comstock and the Comstock Laws

As the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 proposes to revive the Comstock Act, this seven-part forum explores the Act’s influence on American life.
Lebanese auto worker Eva Habib in her work coveralls in 1929.

Arab American Labor

On the centrality of the working classes to the Arab American immigrant experience and the pivotal roles Arab Americans played in American labor.
Map of Cherokee Allotment from the Dawes Commission.

Coercion

“Allotment”—and its repercussions.
Young demonstrators protesting with signs that say "Our Generation Our Choice."

Is It Useful to Analyze Politics in Terms of Generations?

Keir Milburn argues that generational analysis can explain class operation while Adolph Reed Jr. writes that it obscures historically specific social relations.
Gratz Cohen and the manuscript of one of his poems.

A Savannah Poet

The Civil War cut short many lives, and a new a book that blends the genres of history and memoir sets out the resurrect the memory of one of those lives.
A drawing of a bust of Abraham Lincoln sitting on philosophy books.

From Königsberg to Gettysburg

How German Enlightenment thought influenced Abraham Lincoln.
Battleship NEW YORK at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard dry dock, Bremerton, Washington, 1914
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Postcolonial Pacific: The Story of Philippine Seattle

The growth of Seattle in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is inseparable from the arrival of laborers from the US-colonized Philippines.
Homepage of Freedom Seekers website.

Freedom Seekers: Stories of Black Liberation in the American Revolutionary Era and Beyond

A new digital project shows how those who escaped slavery were important actors in the challenge not just to their own enslavement but to slavery more broadly.
Theodore Roosevelt giving a speech.

A Brief History of Former Presidents Running for Reelection: 3 Losses, 1 Win and 1 Still TBD

History illustrates that voters become galvanized and change their party allegiance when former US presidents run for a nonconsecutive term.
A crowd of Vietnamese civilians stare at fires burning in the distance.

I Guess I’m About to Do a Highly Immoral Thing

On "The Vietnam War."
Donald Trump speaks at a rally in July in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

What’s the Matter With the Democrats?

Two new books reveal the shortcomings at the heart of the liberal critique of Trump voters.
Soldiers honoring Robert Imbrie's casket in Washington, D.C. on September 29, 1924.

A Century Ago, a Mob Brutally Attacked an American Diplomat in Persia

The July 1924 killing of Robert Imbrie fueled the rise of the Pahlavi dynasty and set the stage for a CIA-backed 1953 coup and the 1979 Iran hostage crisis.
A crowd of Feminist protestors marching in New York.

A New Look at the Feminist Earthquake

How women's liberation transformed America and why our understanding of 1963-1973 needs to include more voices.
People in red and blue with campaign signs and posters, yelling at each other across a widening chasm.

Divided We Stand: The Rise of Political Animosity

Scientists peered into the partisan abyss. They looked to see why hostility has become so high between groups with different political leanings.
Mike Dirnt, Billy Joe Armstrong, and Tré Cool from the band Green Day.

How Green Day’s American Idiot Pitted Punk Against George W Bush

Twenty years ago, a trio of Calfornian stoners released a polemic against Republican America that politicised a generation.
Los Angeles Times building, after being bombed on October 1, 1910

How They Blew Up the L.A. Times

During the half-century between Lincoln and Woodrow Wilson, class warfare in the United States was always robust, usually ferocious, and often homicidal.
Streetlamps and red trail lights glow in a dark city street.

A Nation of Cop Cities

The push to build large police training facilities follows on a long history of armories as both symbols and manifestations of state power.
Cartoon of a person squished upside-down in a city high-rise.

The Death and Life of Progressive Urbanism

Blue America lacks a Gov. Ron DeSantis: someone remaking a state or major city in the image of a well-articulated ideology.
A homesteader woman feeding chickens.

Some Country for Some Women

As women stretch themselves thin, homesteader influencers sell them an image of containment.
Man burning a picture of Abraham Lincoln.

City on Fire

The night violent anti-government conspirators sowed chaos in the heart of Manhattan.
Small headstones for pets in Hyde Park, London, dating back to the 1880s.

Why the World’s First Pet Cemetery Was Revolutionary

A new book charts the history of pet cemeteries and honors the universal experience of grieving an animal companion.
A ragpicker collects recyclable materials at a landfill.

Why Recycling Is Mostly Garbage

In two new books, the rise of recycling is a story of illusory promises, often entwined with disturbing political agendas.
Illustration imagining Karl Marx sitting on a ranch in Texas.

Marx Goes to Texas

Drawn to communities of German socialist expatriates in the area, Marx once considered making his way to Texas.
Ulysses S. Grant finishing his memoir shortly before he died.

Grant vs. the Klan

New books reconsider how Ulysses S. Grant became a forceful defender of the rights of African Americans after the Civil War.

Elaine Race Massacre: Red Summer in Arkansas

An interactive exhibit that explores the events and consequences of the deadliest racial conflict in Arkansas history.
Hideki Tojo in a courtroom testifying at the Tokyo Trial, guarded by American soldiers.

The Hypocrisies of International Justice

A recent history revisits the Tokyo trial.
"Winter Scene in Brooklyn," 1820 painting by Francis Guy.

How Brooklyn’s Earliest Black Residents Found Empowerment and Solidarity in Their Diverse Community

The little known history of 19th-century New York City.
Painting by Mary Cassatt titled "Mother and Child (Goodnight Hug)".

Beyond “Baby Blues”

“Postpartum depression” encompasses various debilitating changes in mood that can occur after giving birth. How did that language come to be?
University of California, Los Angeles students protest against Israel's war in Gaza.

Why Do Student Protest Movements Fail?

The uncompromising idealism of student protesters is rooted in social and economic isolation and detachment.
Black American soldiers pose with German women and mixed race children.

A Black Woman’s Activism in Postwar (West) Germany

Why one journalist worked with Black American families to adopt mixed-race German children after World War II.
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