Excerpts

The past and present of counterfactual history, from antiquity to the Napoleonic Wars to a few very active subreddits.

Lessons from the anti-fascist novel in Trump’s second term.

On the troubling history of IQ tests and special education.

On how Latino political power has changed Los Angeles.

The very features that made the LAPD appear more professional also expanded its reach and capacity for violence.

On the “Atta-Girls,” the pilots who chased adventure during the Second World War.

The life and career of Murray Kempton attest to the disappearing ideals of a dying industry. But his example suggests those ideals are not beyond resurrection.

When it came to antisemitism, women’s colleges were no better than the Ivy League.

Police brutality and corruption are painful realities. So are officers who die performing their duty. But the memorial in Washington fails to distinguish them.

This isn’t the first effort by a president’s appointee to streamline government.

Like most cultural shifts in language, the rise of white, upper-middle class women who call themselves ‘mama’ seemed to happen slowly, and then all at once.

A 17th-century column shows that dating has always been an anxiety-riddled endeavor.

Winning more than two elections was unthinkable. Then came FDR.

Intelligence agencies have long gathered information to help their governments get a sense of who the next pope might be.

The revolutionary history behind one of America’s main musical exports.

Examining the tumultuous bond between the two brothers.

Espionage has always been with us, but its rapid growth over the past century may have undermined trust in government.

While Democrats waving a Big Bird doll around on the House floor saved public broadcast funding in the past, this strategy does not seem likely to work in 2025.

She translated Black freedom movements' ideals into forms that children could enjoy and grasp, nurturing their political consciousness through music-making.

Medicaid has always been fiercely contested political terrain, and past cuts have had disastrous human costs.

The trio of interests atop business, military, and government depicted in C. Wright Mills’s postwar critique is no longer united in setting the national agenda.

In the 1980s and 1990s, PC Connection built its brand on a campaign starring folksy small-town critters. They’ll still charm your socks off.

Its ingenious design inspired generations of language-processing technology, but only one prototype was made and had long been assumed lost.

In the 19th century, tens of thousands of babies died every year of gastroenteritis.

Films from Vietnam and Hollywood testify to the range of stories told about the war on-screen and the different memories they embody.

There was no “unitary executive” until some dudes made the idea up to save Nixon.

Most countries take their popular novelists more seriously than America has. The term “Great American Novel” was literally invented to describe this book

On folklorist Zora Neale Hurston, who passed away sixty-five years ago today.

How changing gender norms and conceptions of childhood shaped modern child custody laws.

The Fourteenth Amendment captures the idea that no people born in the United States should be forced to live in the shadows.

The system is rigged, and it’s the Constitution that’s doing the rigging.

On the gendered dimensions of trans-Mississippi Civil War memory, the idea of the single-family household, and the politics of expansion and settlement.

A lifetime spent studying the disastrous lead-up to World War I gave Paul Schroeder reason to be horrified at the recklessness of US foreign policy.

C. Wright Mills, Karl Polanyi, and the Frankfurt School in postwar America.

The qualities that enabled Belle da Costa Greene to cross the color line also made her a formidable negotiator and collector for J.P. Morgan’s library.

Having inherited his mother’s beliefs, Reagan was ever faithful to the Disciples of Christ, whose tenets were often at odds with those of the GOP.

On the early history of Black participation in America's pastime.

From Jim Crow-era performance to contemporary gospel musicals, entertainers have shaped the Black public sphere.

“Only two states wanted a civil war—Massachusetts and South Carolina.”

Ararat, a settlement dreamed up in the 1800s, was meant to offer a refuge to Jews. But after an ornate ceremony, plans never got off the ground.

The United States fares badly on the World Happiness Report. Who cares?

After its purchase by a tech entrepreneur, the publication is now a shadow of itself.

"We should go back into history and ask: Why did we need the federal Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906?"

Populist and patrician, hustler and moralist, salesman and satirist, he embodied the tensions within his America, and ours.

Chicago’s latest museum looks to change the narrative around the federally supported housing projects that US cities turned their backs on decades ago.

Marching bands at historically Black colleges and universities can be seen as both celebratory emblems and complicated arbiters of Black American culture.

Food for Peace exemplifies the value of internationalism and humanitarian endeavors in American foreign policy.

Trump is not alone in his support for tariffs. Henry Carey also believed tariffs could help American workers.

What the history of the pocket calculator reveals about the future of AI in classrooms.

On the constitutional settlement that governed America from the end of the Volcker Shock in 1982 to the re-election of Donald Trump in 2024.