Excerpts

Of the presidential elections in early America, few have stressed the themes of sex and gender so spicily as the heated contest of 1856.

A prison is a difficult thing to kill.

Eighty years ago this month, the Kennedy who might have been president was killed on a secret mission over England.

A statistical analysis of how music composition evolved over time.

Ironically, Chevron deference — which the conservative Supreme Court scrapped last month — began as a conservative legal tool.

Douglass elaborated a political theory attuned to the differential character of law as it applied to slaves and other outlaws.

From religious liberty to religious violence, it helps to get our facts straight.

Revisiting Meredith v. Fair, we get the inside story of how critical race theory was developed in the years after Brown v. Board of Education.

Chronicling the emergence of a unique blend of counterculture and Christianity.

Photographs of wild flowers taken by photographers from a Christian utopian community that settled in East Jerusalem at the turn of the 20th century.

To defeat the leftist Sandinistas, Washington provided aid to the Contras along with a crazy psychological warfare anticommunist manual.

America should be ashamed of slavery, but black Americans do not bear the burden of shame.

An exhibit featuring public radio and television programs broadcast over 65 years that explore American agricultural life.

How history textbooks reinforced narratives of racism, and the fight to change those books from the 1940s to the present.

Born enslaved, John Andrew Jackson spent his life fighting for freedom as a fugitive, abolitionist, lecturer and writer.

Times Square’s decline can be dated to the Depression, but it wasn’t until the 1970s that the bottom fell out.

I never knew I lived in an oil town until I went looking for the concealed infrastructure of fossil fuel production.

More importantly, our misappropriation of “puritan” has allowed scholars to ignore and the public to misunderstand religion.

"But he'd have to acknowledge that the soul of his country is southern; the soul of his country is black."

Stop Cop City meets the establishment.

Maurice Isserman’s history of American communism documents both its achievements and its fatal obeisance to Soviet doctrines.

It is hard not to figure the 1968 election as inaugurating the cultural and political polarisation of the American electorate so evident today.

It was an important turning point, but by no means were the riots the first act of Queer resistance.

Defining a social type is a way of defining an era. What can the time of the young urban professional tell us about our own?

Seventeenth-century maps and conflicts in colonial New England.

The history of sheriffs suggests we need to pay attention to what our local sheriffs do, vote in local elections, and choose our sheriffs wisely.

The convergence of economy and politics in the Sino-US relationship via Jonathan Chatwin’s “The Southern Tour” and Elizabeth O’Brien Ingleson’s “Made in China.”

Plus: One historian’s about-face on the Communist record.

A consideration of the evolution of Baldwin’s views on Zionism.

An excess of restrictions has taken a very real toll on the lives of everyday Americans. Their stories must be told.

It wasn’t just scientists who were worried, but Congress, the White House, and even Sports Illustrated, newly unearthed documents show.

The enslaved Prince Whipple acutely felt the contradiction between American ideals and his condition.

A new study claims that songs have become less complex. But the magic of these short, sharp tunes can’t be so easily distilled.

Wang Huning and Alexis de Tocqueville’s dark vision of the future.

One young conservative lawyer would lead a determined fight to maintain Lewis Powell’s blindfolded race neutrality.

The Democratic Party, and the US political system as a whole, is a very strange beast.

Frank Capra’s 1941 drama carries forward the populist themes of his other movies, only with a much darker premise.

In “The Heartland,” Kristin L. Hoganson says America’s Midwest has been more connected to global events than remembered.

Generally speaking, emergencies tend to reduce productivity, at least in the short and medium terms.

On the early years of the real estate industry, and the racist effort to convince white Americans to buy single-family homes.

It was a bold plan to win over Black voters skeptical of the Democratic Party. But it turned out to be an illusion.

"The Bondwoman’s Narrative" is the first novel by a Black woman to describe slavery from the inside. Recently, scholars have discovered her true identity.

James Shapiro's book "The Playbook" is a timely reminder both of the power of theater and of the vehement antipathy it can generate.

Sociological data from immediately after the riots in Watts, Los Angeles, in 1965 show major disparities in attitude by race.

Biden’s withdrawal won’t solve all of Democrats’ problems — but it gives them a chance.

The history of Camp Wo-Chi-Ca tells a largely overlooked story about left-wing politics and Black culture.

For the first time, men are permitted to compete in artistic swimming at the 2024 Olympics. But none will.

At the turn of the century, Chicago police killed 307 people, one in eighteen homicides in the city—three times the body count of local gangsters.

Did music really bring down the Wall?

Following the careers of a family of especially corrupt border control officials.