Excerpts

Curated stories from around the web.
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American soldiers in Vietnam.

If You’ve Watched Ken Burns’ Vietnam Documentary, Do You Need Netflix’s?

I, a historian of the Vietnam War, have watched the Turning Point treatment. I have some notes.
Alleged enemy aliens on way to detention camp, Gloucester, New Jersey, 1918.

The Alien Enemies Act: Annotated

Confused about the oft-mentioned Alien Enemies Act? This explainer, with links to free peer-reviewed scholarship, may help clear things up.
Gothic cathedral

On What Americans Know About Medieval History

A public opinion poll suggests that people really have strong opinions about a period that they don't really know anything about.
Science fiction landscape.

75 Years Ago, "The Martian Chronicles" Legitimized Science Fiction

On Ray Bradbury’s underappreciated classic.

A Chorus of Defiance

Fifty years after the Vietnam War’s end, lessons from the peace movement on mobilizing resistance.
Clark Mills’s statue of Andrew Jackson, Lafayette Park, Washington D.C., circa 1910–1925

Vance’s Junk History

When Donald Trump and his followers go in search of historical forerunners to justify their regime, they turn with striking regularity to the presidency.
Helicopter, soldiers, and civilians at the fall of Saigon.
partner

How We Oversimplified the History of the Vietnam War

Popular memory of the war in both the U.S. and Vietnam tends to cast the fall of Saigon as inevitable.
Diagram of a movement experiment studying abnormalities in walking

The Making of the American Culture of Work

Building the assumption of work’s meaningfulness happened across many different institutions and types of media.
Garment workers use sewing machines at a textile facility in New York City in 1975.

Tariffs and the Shop Floor

A former garment worker reflects on rank-and-file agitation in the US garment industry just before the industry fled the country.
Chief Justices of the Supreme Court attend President Donald Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress at the US Capitol on March 4, 2025, in Washington, DC.

The Courts Won’t Save Us

Rather than resisting authoritarianism, the courts have enabled Trump’s rise.

From Chinese Exclusion to Pro-Palestinian Activism: The History of Politically Motivated Deportation

Removal orders targeting student activists echo America’s long past of jailing and expelling immigrants because of their race, or what they say or believe.
Glass etching superimposed on park landscape to visualize where buildings were.

America’s Forgotten Capital City

At Washington-on-the-Brazos, Texans flex their go-it-alone style.
Collage of the Battles of Lexington and Concord and patriotic imagery.

Revolution and Progress on Lexington Green

The American Revolution’s first battle is a reminder that liberty isn't the result of inevitable progress but a prize won by those willing to fight for it.
Collage of school children, church windows, and a map of Oklahoma territory.

Oklahoma Is Asking the Supreme Court to Ignore History

The Founders had disagreements about the role of religion in America’s public schools, but there was always one line they would not cross.
Two Vietnamese women mourn their relatives on April 29, 1975, at Bien Hoa military cemetery.

US Defeat in Vietnam Was the Right Outcome for an Unjust War

The US invasion of Vietnam was catastrophic for the Vietnamese people, resulting in millions of deaths. Fifty years ago, the US-backed regime finally collapsed.
Illustration of characters from "The Great Gatsby."

How “The Great Gatsby” Took Over High School

The classroom staple turns a hundred.

Milk Country

The making of Vermont's landscape.
Lethal injection table.
partner

Lethal Injection Is Not Based on Science

The history of the three-drug combo used in death-penalty executions. 
A painting of Marie-Louise Coidavid.
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The First and Last Queen of Haiti in Exile

Queen Marie-Louise outlived most of her family, yet her story about the revolution and its aftermath was rarely consulted by those writing the era’s history.
Rachel Cockerell’s “Melting Point" tells the story of an exiled people and their effort to find a place to call home.

When Jews Sought the Promised Land in Texas

While some Jewish exiles dreamed of a homeland in Palestine, the Jewish Territorial Organization fixed its hopes on Galveston.
Cover of "America, América" by Greg Grandin.

The Dialectic Lurking Behind the Brutality

Greg Grandin’s new book tells the story of US expansionism and its complex relationship with the rest of the New World.
Fiorello La Guardia.

How Mayor Fiorello La Guardia Transformed New York City

Zohran Mamdani’s campaign is questioning what a socialist might accomplish as mayor of NYC. To answer it, it’s worth looking back on Fiorello La Guardia.
Mary MacLane.

“I Am Making the World My Confessor”: Mary MacLane, the Wild Woman from Butte

In 1902, a woman named Mary MacLane from Butte, Montana, became an international sensation after publishing a scandalous journal at the age of 19.
A political cartoon of Benjamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland emptying the U.S. treasury.

Radical Tariffs Aren’t New, But They Have Been Disastrous

An American story.
George W. Bush delivering a speech.

George W. Bush Lives on in Donald Trump’s Migrant Policies

The “war on terror” led to a sweeping curtailment of immigrants’ rights that swept up green card holders as well as citizens.
Supreme court passing from the robing room to the court chambers, 1881.
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Lacking a Demonstrable Source of Authority

On the case that provoked the courts to decide if the federal government had jurisdiction to exercise American criminal law over Native peoples on Native lands.
Sam Francis

He’s a Key Thinker of the Radical Right, But Is He All That?

Where the rediscovery of Sam Francis goes wrong.
Francis Townsend
partner

Creating the “Senior Citizen” Political Identity

On the movement that fought for old-age pensions during the Great Depression.
Chinese migrants wrapped in blankets on a beach, from the cover of "Camp of the Saints."
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Mutant Capitalism

How the dystopian visions of the nativist right are in keeping with a long tradition of neoliberal ideology.
John Quincy Adams
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Are You Not Large and Unwieldy Enough Already?

John Quincy Adams challenges the idea of an expanding American frontier. 
Henry James.

Henry James’s American Journey

Why his turn-of-the-century travelogue still resonates.
Workmen clearing cobwebs from exterior of the White House, c. 1920.
partner

How to Succeed in Government Without Really Trying

The long history of promising an “efficient” federal government. 
Edward Said.

Said’s Specter

Columbia is at war with its intellectual heritage.
rattlesnake

How the Rattlesnake Almost Became an Emblem of a Nascent America

On the centuries-long historical evolution of a serpentine symbol.
California gold miners, ca. 1850–1852.

A Gold Rush of Witnesses

Letters, diaries, and remembrances shared on JSTOR by University of the Pacific reveal the hardships of day-to-day life during the California Gold Rush.
The “Visscher Map of the New World” including North and South America, 1658.

The Impossibly Intertwined History of the Americas

A conversation with Greg Grandin about his groundbreaking new book "America, América: A New History of the New World."
Filmmaker Oliver Stone speaks to journalists following a hearing with the House Oversight Committee at the US Capitol on April 1, 2025, in Washington, DC.

Oliver Stone Goes to Washington

Legendary filmmaker Oliver Stone says we’re closer than ever to finally piecing together the mystery of November 22, 1963.
Catholic activists burn draft files to protest the Vietnam War in Catonsville, Maryland, 1968.

Resistance Reexamined

The complex, sometimes romanticized, but ultimately prophetic Catholic peace movement has critical lessons for today's America amid a genocidal war in Gaza.
Trump from behind, and the Washington monument.

How Trump Wants to Change History

Late last month, President Donald Trump issued an executive order to restore “truth and sanity to American history.”
An eagle grabbing the earth, focused on Latin America, in its talons.

What America Means to Latin Americans

In a new book, the Pulitzer Prize winner Greg Grandin tells the history of the hemisphere from south of the border.
William McKinley's  presidential inauguration.

A Warning for Democrats From the Gilded Age and the 1896 Election

Effective Republican organizing and intraparty divisions among Democrats solidified GOP political dominance until the 1930s.
U.S Custom House.

Lessons from Early America’s Tariff Wars

The 1790s debate shows that, even when they aim at moral goods, tariffs abet cronyism and corruption.
Shulamith Firestone, 1997.

When the Battle's Lost and Won

Shulamith Firestone and the burdens of prophecy.
City workers get their lunch at the Horn & Hardart automat in New York City, ca 1940.

Choice and Its Discontents

Today no one on either side of the political spectrum would present themselves as an enemy of choice. Sophia Rosenfeld exposes the complex legacy of this idea.
Justice John Roberts.

The Supreme Court Could Take Another Shot at Voting Rights

If the justices take up a case on Virginia’s felon disenfranchisement law, they’ll be burrowing back to Reconstruction-era jurisprudence.
Eugen Sandow flexing his bicep.

The Evolution of the Alpha Male Aesthetic

If you've noticed a certain look common to the manosphere, you're not mistaken. A visual identity has taken hold, with roots that trace back decades.
Huddie Lesbetter's draft registration card.

Secret Recordings Show President Roosevelt Debating Military Desegregation with Civil Rights Leaders

More than a year before Pearl Harbor, President FDR heard arguments from the civil rights leaders of the era for the desegregation of the military.
Illustration from the “Projected Trends” section of Hugh Ferriss’ The Metropolis of Tomorrow (1929).

Modern Babylon: Ziggurat Skyscrapers and Hugh Ferriss’ Retrofuturism

In the early twentieth century, architects turned to a newly discovered past to craft novel visions of the future: the ancient history of Mesopotamia.
An aerial view of houses in Jersey City, United States on July 13, 2024.

Is The ‘Predatory’ Property Tax An Instrument Of Oppression?

According to Andrew Kahrl, the property tax has been used to disposs black homeowners since the 19th century.
Miami's skyline with high-rises under construction.

How Dreams of Buried Pirate Treasure Enticed Americans to Flock to Florida

1925 marked the peak of the Florida land boom. But false advertising and natural disasters thwarted many settlers’ visions of striking it rich.
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