Excerpts

At least 12 Black chemists and physicists worked as primary researchers on the team that developed the technology behind the atomic bomb.

These caricatures of well-known Philadelphians transpose human heads onto animal forms.

The controversial historian drew criticism from both left and right. We need more like him today.

A relic of WWI that helped destroy the anti-war left, it remains a threat to news outlets, political organizers, and challengers of the surveillance state.

A camp diva, a queer icon, and a model of feminism—the memorable Mae West left behind a complicated legacy, on and off the stage.

Though technologies have altered information warfare, the underlying principles remain unchanged since the day-to-day operations of the Continental Army.

The Law and Economics movement was one front in the decades-long advance of a revived free-market ideology that became the new American consensus.

On Darryl Holter and Stephen Gee’s “Driving Force: Automobiles and the New American City, 1900–1930.”

Community cookbooks provide a perspective on the American melting pot.

The politicized rhetoric linking race and welfare has a long, ingrained history.

In the 1940s, a series of books tried to use the conventions of detective fiction to expose the degree of prejudice in postwar America.

Development and dispossession as a two-pronged conquest.

Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton lived an unapologetic life that transcended genres and gender norms beyond her bluesy hit song and the “Elvis moment.”

Women have been punching each other in the face (during boxing matches) since the early 1700s.

In the eighteenth century, if people in British North America had to travel, they stayed at public houses that were often just repurposed private homes.

An intellectual history.

The Manson Family murders weren’t a countercultural revolt. They were about power, entitlement, and Hollywood.

Digital communications allowed transgender individuals and organizations the digital tools to organize and connect at a previously impossible scale and speed.

And justified the most extreme responses.

What happened after the destruction of Greenwood, once home to some of the wealthiest African Americans in the US.

Today, historical figures are held in deep suspicion, but refusing to acknowledge the heroes of the past diminishes our own sense of what is possible.

For generations, Native American children were removed from their homes and placed with white families.

The esteemed labor historian reflects on his life and career, including Berkeley in the 1960s, Walter Reuther, the early UAW, Walmart, Bill Clinton, and more.

The visa lottery reveals the inherent myths and contradictions at play in the US immigration system.

The meaning of coral jewelry in nineteenth-century America.

The 2007–2008 crisis was an epic clusterfuck. The rise of private equity has only made things worse.

The post-9/11 landscape witnessed crackdowns on New York City nightlife amidst efforts to increase tourism.

The president didn’t want to go too far on civil rights in 1948, fearing it would cost him reelection. But an obscure mayor changed the race — and his party.

Native to Paraguay, Ka’a he’e followed a circuitous path through Indigenous medicine, Japanese food science, and American marketing to reach the US sweeteners market.

A miracle cure for addiction may not be around the corner.

In her new role as antisemitism envoy, Deborah Lipstadt will attempt to fight a scourge of antisemitism that she seems to regard as incurable.

Why did Chicago become the headquarters of free market fundamentalism? Adam Smith offers a clue.

Penmanship was once considered a window to the soul. The digital age has closed it.

Public outcry over whistleblower William Morgan's disappearance gave rise to the Anti-Masonic Party, which nominated a candidate for president in 1832.

Heritage animal breeding has transformed living history museums and challenged both the public and historians to reconsider colonial Americans’ animal world.

All told, Arne overstayed his welcome at least four times — 1940, 1944, 1953 and 1954. It’s hard to say why.

Remembering the Russian cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, and how she challenged American stereotypes.

Free blacks cared for those infected with yellow fever even as their own lives were imperiled.

The voice of Doctor Johnson, archcritic of the American Revolution, was constantly in mind for the Declaration of Independence’s drafter.

150 years of typewriter history in the city that invented the QWERTY keyboard.

Part of the utility of the game is how many intersections can be addressed, a Choose Your Own Adventure of lesson planning.

And the origins of the term “Kafkaesque.”

A foundational flaw of the United States.

"The Floating University: Experience, Empire, and the Politics of Knowledge"

Hawks may claim that uncompromising defense policies won the Cold War. But his pursuit of peace was more important.

Co-writer Steve Cropper and other collaborators take a new look back at the legendary song, recorded just weeks before the singer’s tragic 1967 death.

How French cuisine became beloved among status-hungry diners in the United States, from Thomas Jefferson to Kanye West.

It’s been 25 years since Puff Daddy went to the Hamptons. What’s changed?

Starbucks and Anheuser-Busch are the latest corporate targets of tactics honed by segregationists post–Brown v. Board.

James Armistead was an enslaved man who provided critical intel to the Continental Army as a double agent during the Revolutionary War.