Excerpts

The most consequential shift that year was not one of battle lines but of ideology.

Amid plans to mark the nation’s semiquincentennial, many are asking whether or not the people really do rule, and whether the law is still king.

Fifty years ago today, Angola gained its independence from Portuguese domination. But the US was already working hard to snuff out the hopes of liberation.

The discovery of DNA was evidence of how deeply interconnected humans are, but the late scientist saw only difference.

Habeas corpus, the right to challenge unlawful detention, is at the center of a debate over presidential power.

Why is the essential promise of technology and the alleviation of drudgery not enough?

The country is losing neighbourhood orchards—and a connection to its origins.

How the U.S. Post Office took point on civil defense.

How the legacy of architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright are disappearing in our modern era.

These proposals sought to change the United States’ name, abolish the presidency, and set a limit on personal fortunes, among other measures.

Leo Frank’s trial, death sentence, eventual commutation, and finally his lynching all show the nation’s problematic history with anti-Semitism.

Looking back, and ahead, on the anniversary of a White House warning.

The transnational nature of America's fight for independence.

The story of the Armed Services Editions.

Washington has long been a disproportionately gay city—a mecca for clever, ambitious young men who want to escape their hometowns’ prying eyes.

Theodore Roosevelt was the first White House occupant to seek control over how newspapers covered him.

Municipal bonds have become an unavoidable part of local governance—and their costs divide rich towns from poor ones.

The rabid, apocalyptic Beat poetry that is "Mission with LeMay."

Over decades, and through harrowing experiences, my family held on to this bit of cloth as a reminder of everything they believed in—and were running toward.

A new history of New York City during World War II captures the glory, tawdriness, poverty, narcissism, beauty, and grime of this “aggregation of villages.”

It’s only in recent history that freedom has come to mean having a huge array of choices in life. Did we take a wrong turn?

The struggle over loyalty oaths reveals how Americans learned to wield faith and coercion in the name of freedom.

Springsteen’s 1982 classic has become an American scripture, its ghosts of fathers and highways still haunting today’s America.

Atlanta’s 1966 Summerhill Rebellion erupted after police shot Harold Prather, exposing racism, poverty, and neglect worsened by stadium-led upheaval.

Before the book’s publication, no one, it seemed, wanted to talk about abortion publicly. But something changed with when the book finally arrived in 1966.

A new biopic starring Sydney Sweeney as the legendary athlete chronicles Martin’s fights in and outside of the ring.

What does 1968 have to do with 2025?

For many, Dick Cheney epitomized idealistic foreign policy hubris.

After 9/11, he used his role as President George W. Bush’s chief strategist to approve the use of torture and steer U.S. occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.

The 'Social Register' was a who’s who of America’s rich and powerful. It was also the perfect hit list.

How the critic Malcolm Cowley made American literature into its own great tradition.

He died an irrelevant, all-but-forgotten figure—and mostly had himself to blame.

As much as the Trumpists claim to disavow the War on Terror, they walk a path paved by the most powerful vice president in US history.

How the marriage of American exceptionalism and liberal Zionism led to genocide.

Black-led vigilance committees not only protected and aided fugitives but also learned from the formerly enslaved as they built a movement pedagogy together.

New York City NIMBYism, restrictive zoning, and Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s "Abundance."

How the conservative scholar’s 1996 bestseller anticipated blaming everything on “woke.”

When the American Dream came to Africa.

Technology changes us—and it is currently changing us for the worse.

From effective rain-enhancing technology to a long, secretive history of trying to weaponize storms, there’s fertile ground for misinformation.

How Charlottesville’s memorial landscape can help us understand — and combat — the White House’s violent plans to reshape the nation’s public spaces.

The country’s 40-year-ago embrace of free trade with the U.S. has come back to haunt it.

A recent book on Toni Morrison's career in publishing makes the case that the great American novelist should also be seen as a pathbreaking editor.

Federal agents have long harassed immigrants and Black and brown people in cities, but something dangerous is changing behind the scenes.

Those who sought to modernize and reform prisons have expanded them in the process and more permanently entrenched a racialized carceral state.

Arguably no American journalist wielded as much influence as Walter Lippmann did in the 20th century. But what did he do with that power?

The protection against racial gerrymandering in Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act is constitutional. Just read Section 2 of the 14th Amendment.

Finished in October 1825, the Erie Canal connected increasingly specialized regions, altering the economic landscape of the northeast United States.

'Freaks' asked audiences to think about the exploitative display of human difference while also demonstrating that the sideshow was a locus of community.

Revisiting the Lost Cause through post–Civil Rights Movement alternative histories.