Excerpts

What happened to the Bailey family in the Detroit suburb of Warren became a flashpoint in the national battle over integration.

How the Southern Strategy of the late 20th century gave rise to the modern GOP.

Whatever writing is today, it is not self-evident. But writing by hand did not simply continue to “advance” until it inevitably began to erode.

On how Europe’s interwar period informs the present.

“It was made under the worst of conditions,” the filmmaker reveals in a new book. “People versus the eternal sea. The sea won the battle.”

Politicians from both sides used to agree on immigration policy. What happened?

Researchers studying the 160-year-old fur of a dog named Mutton found that the breed existed for at least 5,000 years before European colonizers eradicated it.

A new biography examines the enigma of the musician.

The 20th century brought dinner parties to the masses, along with some truly unhinged entertaining advice.

As director of the FBI for decades, J. Edgar Hoover helped build a massive, professionalized national security state and hounded leftists out of public life.

Powered by compressed air, the system transported millions of letters between 1897 and 1953.

George Washington's fraught relationship with Native Americans.

A new book shows that Uber was a symbol of a neoliberal philosophy that neglected public funding and regulation in favor of rule by private corporations.

Mars fantasists still cling to dreams of the Old West.

When speech offends, who decides where boundaries should be drawn?

The exhibition “Mermaids and Monsters” explores hoaxes of yore.

How decades-old decisions to build two California prisons in a dry lakebed and a chaotic climate left 8,000 incarcerated people at risk.

In March 1911, the segregated Crownsville asylum opened outside Baltimore, Maryland, admitting only Black patients.

Republicans may claim otherwise, but the civil rights hero was no color-blind conservative.

Americans have been isolated at the U.N. on Israel for a half century — but that used to prompt fierce debate.

Lost cause narratives sometimes have been powerful enough to build or destroy political regimes. They can advance a politics of grievance.

In the 19th century, civil wars tore apart the US, Mexico and Argentina. Then came democracy’s fight against reaction.

Prohibition—and its newly created underground economy—changed the way women lived, worked, and socialized.

A reminder of how tricky it is to balance protecting transparency and freedom of association.

Alicia Puglionesi explores the damage white supremacy did to Native Americans and their land.

Popular accounts of the Holocaust overlook its irrationality and often disordered violence.

Without a shared civic narrative – the pursuit of liberal democratic self-government – the rival regional cultures of the United States agree on very little.

The 26th president once demanded that military personnel be able to walk 50 miles in 20 hours. I set off on an ill-fated mission to see if I could do it myself.

Bruce Kuklick traces the meaning of the term “fascist” from its origins to the present day and how it has, over the years, gradually lost its coherence.

Without smart regulation, price competition turns into a race to the bottom.

Searching for the first, in the 1860s.

In narrowly focusing on Leonard Bernstein’s tortured personal life, "Maestro" fails to explore his tortured artistic life.

Belief that schools must teach moral values is older than public schools themselves. But whose morals?

Knowing I come from people who lived hard lives and endured terrible things is difficult. Knowing that I come from someone who ruined lives haunts me.

Over the past year, two prominent historians have invited readers to rethink the master narrative of US history.

Media coverage of the civil rights movement is a reminder that the deification of King has skewed public memory.

Matter-of-fact accounting of the legal mechanism of slavery provides insight into American history and the country’s fraught present.

A compelling history of the fertile 1950s-’60s firmament surveys Lower Manhattan’s Coenties Slip.

No coconut, chocolate, or mint in sight.

“This isn’t about being for one group or against another. It’s about basic human rights.”

Right-wing radio stations are tied to an increase in conservatism among listeners.

The 1886 blizzard imperiled settlers and left fields of dead cattle in its wake.

A pair of lawsuits claim that courts were a strong check against federal agency power in early America, but history shows otherwise.

How the territory became the frontline of the battle for abolition.

American elites accepted the economic theory of "comparative advantage" mainly because it justified their geopolitical agenda.

The indoor suburban shopping center is a special kind of abandoned place.

In the 1890s, boxing went from lower class brawling to upper class show of masculinity.

John Mitchell's renowned 1755 map was a part of King George III's extensive collection of topographical charts that helped shape American designs on Canada.

The documentary short “Catwoman vs. the White House” reconstructs an unexpected moment of activism during the Vietnam War.

A memoir of the Family Stone.