Excerpts

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

Top Chef contestant Nini Nguyen shares the history of the Viet diaspora and how two cultures combined to create a whole new delicious Southern flavor.

Tracing the histories and legacies of technology and empire through a wooden bicycle at Thinktank Birmingham Science Museum.

The celebrations created space for people to subvert gender norms, as New Orleans' LGBTQ communities built new traditions of their own.

“It was an affirmation of our city,” says New Orleanian food historian Lolis Eric Elie.

Even if today's anti-war protestors couldn’t tell you who the Berrigan brothers were, the Catholic Left’s shadow looms large.

George Balanchine and Martha Graham trade places.

Caricatures of Irish immigrants—especially Irish women—have softened, but persist in characters whose Irishness is expressed in subtle cues.

We don’t need to imagine a world ravaged by nuclear war – we’re already living in it.

One of the country’s greatest rhetorical traditions still has the power to remind us of our founding principles.

Clare Beams on the dark legacy of a purported pregnancy miracle drug.

The world-spanning art of the Harlem Renaissance.

From the 1880s to the 1940s, New York City was transformed—and so too was the New York City Police Department.

From the beginning of the recording industry, many voices have been suppressed and significant cultural history has been lost to prudery and censorship.

It’s important to remember why analogies to Jesus should stay out of the political realm. The results are always ugly.

How "liberal democracy" emerged from the wreckage of World War II and became the dominant ideology of our times.

What accounts for white tribalism?

Even knowing every awful thing Richard Nixon would go on to do, you had to respect, as the phrase goes, his hustle.

For Faulkner, all of time existed as a moment, during which all could be changed: past, present, and future.

Frederick Law Olmsted’s landscape creations, especially his urban parks, remain a vital part of our present.

Taking seriously the midlife crisis.

The captivity narrative as creation myth.

We are living through a time when we cannot take our shared identity—and therefore our shared stories—for granted.

What prospects are there today for assessing American politics and history from an early Hofstadterian remove?

Why is Shelby Foote's Civil War subject to so much contemporary debate?

Turning the history of capitalism into a morality tale about good guys and bad guys is tempting.

Thoreau’s loafing and the purpose of life.

The greatest challenge presented by modern corporations, small as well as large, involves purpose.

The rise and fall of the Shingle Style ideal.

Who is the father of American capitalism?

Touring the palimpsests of cities.

Friedman's viewpoint went far deeper and has been more lasting than the politics of 1970.

The ultimate semantic receivers, selectors, and transmitters are still us.

A descendant of the Oneida Community reflects on the famous 19th century experiment in managing sexual freedom.

In the American South, an oligarchy of planters enriched itself through slavery. Pervasive underdevelopment is their legacy.

The surprising history of a politically charged phrase.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s struggle against polio transformed him into the man who led the country through the Great Depression and World War II.

The federal government has long controlled immigration law—and for very good reason.

They were one of the most ubiquitous crafts to come out of Japanese incarceration camps. But few knew their back story — until now.

Larry David is the last of his kind—and in several ways.

A lifelong passion for the national pastime led John Thorn to redefine the sport's relationship with statistics and reveal the truth behind its earliest days.

It was never very effective at preventing drug use.

Over the course of U.S. history, presidential rematches have signaled momentous political upheavals.

A look inside America’s first political dynasty.

Gary Bass’s new book asks why the tribunal in Tokyo after World War II was so ineffective.

How the spectacle of the 1806 solar eclipse impacted the national consciousness.

On May 10, 1900, the Navy steamship Quito sailed from Brooklyn, New York, to deliver 5,000 tons of corn and seeds to the “starving multitudes” of India.

Leona Tate thought it must be Mardi Gras. Gail thought they were going to kill her.

The first Black woman to play the Grand Ole Opry and hit Billboard’s country music charts.

A conspiracy theory among New England Federalists led some to contemplate separating from the U.S. during the War of 1812.