Excerpts

Both Southerners. Both all but forgotten. Both, in their own ways, questioned the social constructions of race and white supremacy in their writings.

What should children learn in school? It's a question that's stirred debate for decades, and in 1974 it led to violent protests in West Virginia.

An 1848 investigative news story that relied on heavy data analysis snared big fish, including two future presidents.

A film produced by Western Electric, a haunting glimpse into the construction of the Twin Towers in New York and their early use.

Displaying the material history of the CIA.

The Tulsa race massacre of 1921 was one of the worst acts of racial violence in American history. It was also part of a larger pattern across the country.

Lepore’s framework insists that the “self-evident” truths of the nation’s founding were anything but.

One academic tells the story behind his new book -- and his next one.

While he did not die in a war, he can certainly be mourned as a casualty of war—as can the thousands of other veterans who have died by suicide.

Policies meant to whiten America almost always backfire.

On "Power and Liberty," a condensed version of Gordon Wood's entire sweep of scholarship about constitutionalism.

How a California homebuilder remade the Interior West.

According to Geoffrey Levin’s ‘Our Palestine Question,’ divides over Israeli policy aren’t new – they existed before American Jews fully embraced Zionism.

Proposition 6, better known as the Briggs Initiative, was the first attempt to restrict the rights of lesbian and gay Americans by popular referendum.

Jonathan Edwards’s sermon reflects the complicated religious culture of eighteenth-century America, influenced not just by Calvinism, but Newtonian physics as well.

The IBM 7094 anticipated the future of music—and also sounded like the Auto-Tuned pop stars of today.

A journey through the African American landscape.

How Charles Lamb and his collection of well-loved books inspired a generation of American collectors.

Was this Virginia? No one was quite sure.

Class conflict undermines assumptions about political solidarity.

In pre-Civil War Richmond, Black people were forced to literally pay for the mechanisms of white supremacy.

Long before 9/11, Zionist groups like the Anti-Defamation League lobbied for counterterror legislation that singled out Palestinians.

‘The Achilles Trap’ reexamines the relationship between Hussein and four U.S. administrations.

The former secretary of state is responsible for virtually every American geopolitical disaster of the past half-century.

In the 19th century ledger drawings became a concentrated point of resistance for Indigenous people, an expression of individual and communal pride.

Remembering the river helps me forget, at least for a moment, the challenges, fears, and feelings of inadequacy I experienced in my childhood.

Two differing explorations of post-WWII culture, politics, and ideals.

How Istanbul changed his career—and his life.

Extractive industries filling public university coffers on stolen land. Here's how 14 land-grant colleges took 8.2 million acres from 123 Indigenous nations.

After World War II ended, government and military leaders were ready to return women to their domestic roles. But one woman had other ideas.

Even throwing off of a colonial power, representative institutions, Protestantism, and local autonomy in school decisions did not produce an egalitarian system.

In Chicago, preservationists have launched an unusual effort to explore the radical history of the 1960s civil rights group through the city’s built environment.

In “The Court at War,” Cliff Sloan examines the close relationship between FDR and the high court during World War II.

A conversation about James Baldwin’s 1967 essay, “Negroes are Anti-Semitic Because They are Anti-White.”

The two-volume ‘Codex of the Endangered Species Act’ takes a long look back — and forward.

When Miles Davis went electric in the late 1960s, he overhauled his thinking about songs, genres, and what it meant to lead a band.

In sending military aid to Ukraine, America’s values and security interests are aligned.

Isaiah Bowman was one of the worst college presidents in American history.

Despite knowing that plastic recycling wouldn't work, new documents show how petrochemical companies promoted it anyway.

In resurrecting stories of non- and anti-Zionist critics, a new book shows American Jews how questioning Israel is deeply rooted in their community.

On the inseparable histories of matrimony and disunion in the United States.

In the past 3 months, two people in the US have taken or risked taking their own lives in an attempt to change US policies on Palestine and call for a cease-fire.

Today, tech platforms, including social media, are the new common carriers.

How plantation fiction fixed ghost stories to Black Americans.

The reflections of Emerson, Thoreau, and William James one finds a characteristically nineteenth-century American sense of resilience and regeneration.

Meet cartography's most persistent mistake.

Richard Staff interviews four former Brooklyn Dodgers players, who, despite the team's move to Los Angeles, still identify with their Brooklyn roots.

The COVID-19 pandemic affected us in millions of ways. But it evades the meanings we want it to bear.

Mexicali’s "Colorado River Family Album" documents what is no more.

This 1994 documentary brings the passions and agonies of Mississippi’s voter-registration drive into the present tense.