Excerpts

As seemingly all of the American food media tripped over itself to create listicles around National Taco Day, I shook my head in disgust.

History shows that cities and towns have been poor stewards of what makes them special.

It’s about more than immigration.

In 1923, the U.S. Senate approved a new monument in D.C. "in memory of the faithful slave mammies of the South."

A minor incident gets distorted in order to provide a desired racial story.

Did Robert Moses ordered engineers to build the Southern State Parkway’s bridges extra-low, to prevent poor people in buses from them? The truth is complex.

Americans have long demanded — and regularly received — debt relief from legislatures.

The New York Renaissance, also known as the Harlem Renaissance, was the first Black-owned, all-black, fully-professional basketball team established in 1923.

Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit against Fox News' coverage of claims that the company had rigged the 2020 election may soon become an artifact of a vanished era.

It was actually from a 1950s antisemitic and white supremacist magazine. Who cares?

The enduring Korean War.

Child labor was common in urban, industrial America for most of the country’s history. Now lawmakers are making concerted efforts to repeal statutes that prohibit it.

Mannahatta's fascinating pre-city ecology of hills, rivers, wildlife when Times Square was a wetland and you couldn't get delivery.

A favorite of Old Hickory, she made him seem kinder than he was. Why?

The Statue of Freedom atop the U.S. Capitol wouldn’t exist without the artistry of an enslaved man named Philip Reed.

If judges are going to use history as their guide, they should probably try to get the history right.

The origins of Chinese-American dishes, and the spots where these two cultures have combined to form a new cuisine.

Milk banks, a successor concept to wet nursing, are a little discussed part of the contemporary landscape of infant care.

Oysters are working tirelessly for the benefit of New York Harbor after years of over-harvesting and sewage-induced turmoil.

How Henry Ford managed the formation of the Ford Motor Company.

The Civil War general's reputation was shaped by partisan politics, editorial whims and his own personal failings.

A professor explains the trauma of encountering "an idea disguised as a word."

Bodegas serve as lifelines and community centers, yet have faced heinous violence. Here is the story of the New York City bodega.

Experts see parallels between modern restrictions on drag shows and the cross-dressing laws that led police to arrest Babe Bean over 120 years ago in California.

The standard narrative of Roosevelt's court-packing efforts casts them as a failure. But what if they were a success?

Hookworm eradication efforts, along with the development of institutionalized public health, often neglected the health of the Black community.

William Magear “Boss” Tweed, who became a political force in New York as leader of the “Tweed Ring,” was found guilty in 1873 of 102 separate crimes.

For decades, these Los Angeles streets have played host to key events in LGBTQ+ history. But gentrification has transformed the area.

When drafting the Constitution, our founders had no need of prayer.

Activists are working to preserve the history of the “wade-ins” that opened the space to everyone.

The Brown v. Board of Education ruling opened the floodgates for busing across the country, but what happened when the buses stopped rolling?

A massive protest by Mexican American high school students was a milestone in a movement for Chicano rights.

How one doctor’s letter and a string of dodgy studies spurred a public health panic.

Yaupon tea, a botanical cousin to yerba maté, is now almost unknown.

The real history of Juneteenth is much messier—and more inspiring.

A new biography of William Still show how the abolitionist documented the underground railroad as he helped people through it.

The Declaration of Independence seems to Pauline Maier to be "peculiarly unsuited" for the role that it eventually came to play in America.

The blockbuster "Jaws" (1975) provoked fear by portraying sharks as "mindless eating machines." But what did people think of sharks before then?

The reasons have to do with the complexity of the transaction, but also with the industry’s explosive growth in its early years.

With the emergence of the US as a global superpower in the twentieth-century, anti-Palestinian stereotypes in the media bled over to stigmatize Arab Americans.

Lizzie Borden’s father and stepmother were brutally murdered, possibly by Lizzie herself, in August 1892. Why are we still dissecting the crime?

Lessons on race-neutral admissions from California.

One of the most indispensable guitarists of all time, Carter was a quiet revolutionary.

On Philip Dray’s “A Lynching at Port Jervis.”

Sculptor Gutzon Borglum was deeply involved with the Ku Klux Klan while designing the Confederate memorial at Stone Mountain, Ga.

A companion to a new PBS film, "The Memorial Day Massacre," the first oral history exploring the murder of 10 workers in Chicago.

"The Essential Willie Nelson" compilation demonstrates the continuity of Nelson's style across a variety of musical genres.

How did a field meant to reclaim genetics from Nazi abuses wind up a haven for race science?

On the necessary “deep sincerity” of dark humor.

The greatest unsolved murders in Los Angeles' history, bloodier than the Black Dahlia, more vicious than the hit on Bugsy Siegel, occurred on a night in 1871.