Excerpts

The disparate and intriguing connections found in environmental history, one tree ring at a time.

No other 20th-century American novel did quite so much to burnish Brooklyn’s reputation.

For half a century, viewers scorned the laugh track while adoring shows that used it. Now it has all but disappeared.

Funny, convivial, chatty—a new edition of Emily Dickinson's letters upends the myth of her reclusive genius. 

DARE lost its once hegemonic influence over drug education, but it had long-lasting effects on American policing, politics, and culture.

Marbled paper was a way to make banknotes and checks unique—a critical characteristic for a nascent American Republic.

Between the 1920s and 1940s, wealthy young women signed up to run errands and carry messages for the Frontier Nursing Service.

The bipartisan push to create AmeriCorps, and the community service organization's impact.

How lesbian teenagers forged community bonds and found connection through magazines.

Land acknowledgments amount to the hollow incantations of hollow people.

You can thank Eric Voegelin for the right’s clichéd catchall critique for the left.

Film and television writers face an existential threat.

Rat bones collected from centuries-old shipwrecks tell a story of ecological competition and swift victory.

A reconsideration of Robert Frost at 150.

The Postal Savings System offered depositors a US government-backed guarantee of security, but it was undone by for-profit private banks.

A new PBS documentary whitewashes the conservative founder of National Review.

Despite assumptions about its demise, it is still enmeshed in the foundations of how some professions think about the world.

It’s a great time to be in a union—but a terrible time to try to start a new one.

The women who opposed their own enfranchisement in the Victorian era have little in common with the “Repeal the 19th” fringe of today.

The star of the 1920s silver screen who appears on Taylor Swift’s new album abruptly left Hollywood at the height of her success.

Activists around the country are debating the best ways to acknowledge lynchings. But they often meet resistance from local residents — both Black and White.

On Cormac McCarthy.

Minstrel shows were an American invention, but they also found success in the United Kingdom, where audiences were negotiating their relationships with empire.

For more than 50 years, we've been worrying about "grade inflation" at elite American universities. It's time to move on.

The prominence of politicos-turned-pundits is a product of cable news' turn to opinion commentary as a cheap and easy way to meet the needs of 24/7 coverage.

Syncopation and swing reigned supreme at the annual Lorton Reformatory Jazz Festival in the 1960s.

The people of White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, helped keep the Greenbrier resort's bunker—designed to hold the entirety of Congress—hidden for 30 years.

A brief history of the license plate.

How preparation for a big purchase turned into an adventure through history.

What happened when glacier-goggled American ski troops and samba-loving Brazilian soldiers fought side-by-side halfway across the world?

An argument for returning the recent past, and the history of modern conservatism, to classrooms.

The history of the battle to keep Title IX out of college sports.

This nineteenth-century industrial product became a military staple and a critical part of local food culture around the world.

In 1968 Gaye shifted his musical vision to give voice to impoverished Black urban communities and the rising dissent against involvement in the Vietnam War.

Silence and volume in collections and institutions.

As the fear of communist subversion spread throughout America, McCarthy launched hearings that were based on scant evidence and overblown charges.

Valentine devoted his time to writing the Manual of the Corporation of the City of New York. These were annual compendiums of data about the city.

Three US presidents from the South’s borders—Truman, Eisenhower, and Johnson—worked against Southern politicians to support civil and voting rights.

Allison Rudnick on the rise and fall of the 19th century "Literary Poster."

In Lincoln’s view the West represented a space for opportunity, especially for the citizen-soldiers returning to their prewar pursuits.

The US today has extraordinary levels of gun ownership. But to see this as a venerable tradition is to misread history.

A classic New Yorker account of the Henry Ward Beecher adultery trial recalls a time in America that seems both incomprehensible and familiar.

Luis Valdez on his friendship with Cesar Chavez, his works in the National Film Registry, and a lifetime of activism.

The U.S. purposefully infected thousands of Guatemalans with sexually-transmitted diseases in the 40s and 50s. Their grandchildren still carry the trauma.

It’s time to start learning about Native history from museums and cultural centers that are run by Native nations.

Historian Robin Blackburn has completed a trilogy of books that provide a comprehensive Marxist account of slavery in the New World.

Retracing the steps of a Texan lynched in 1921 requires a trip through dark days in state history.

The anti-obscenity law is unenforceable and probably unconstitutional. Conservatives still want to use it to ban medication abortions.

The 2024 OAH Conference on American History falls almost fifteen years after the renowned historian, teacher, and activist's death.

The power of daytime talk shows — especially “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”