Excerpts

I thought having a rat czar would be an easy win for the city. I was wrong.

Walmart did not invent or import the idea. In fact, it was among the last of the discount department stores to experiment with the concept.

1796, the first contested presidential election.

Loss of control over knowledge of the female body cemented women’s status as second-class citizens.

Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy publicly apologized after restaurants refused to serve Black representatives of newly independent nations.

The rise in undergraduate degrees was supposed to increase prosperity and cut economic inequality. Biden’s student debt relief plan proves otherwise.

Examining slavery, Indian removal, and state policies regulating mobility to trace the constitutional origins of immigration restriction in the 1800s.

The partnership between rabbis and labor that delivered the two-day weekend.

Women’s rights activism has shaped America for the better throughout our history, so why should colleges be banned from teaching it?

It is worth digging a bit deeper into the family matters between John and Elizabeth.

Was the nineteenth-century Midwest “the most advanced democratic society that the world had seen”?

In 1908, Korean nationalists assassinated a pro-Japanese American diplomat in front of the Ferry Building.

Throughout its history, the technology sector has been dependent on the federal budget.

Decades before paleontology’s formal establishment, Black and Native Americans discovered—and correctly identified—millennia-old fossils.

After years of opposition and delay, Waco finally has posted a historical marker about the 1916 murder of Jesse Washington.

And how streaming is changing it again.

Soon after he was elected, Abraham Lincoln received a rather bizarre letter.

Efforts in early America to educate Black children offer us a template for addressing educational inequality today.

The top educational priorities in the Sunshine State were apparently reading, writing, and anti-communism.

Russia’s recent nuclear threats have revived Cold War animosity with roots in the Cuban missile crisis.

Fertilizers filled with the nutrient boosted our ability to feed the planet. Today, they’re creating vast and growing dead zones in our lakes and seas.

The main issue they were debating was how democratic a representative body should be. And their answer was “not very democratic at all.”

How conservatives made him their icon and distorted his ideas.

Some essential lessons from an earlier culture war.

Decorating graves with flowers, from a Civil War grassroots ritual of remembrance to a national tradition honoring all military dead.

A new history explores the emergence of international economic institutions that continue to wield immense influence over the domestic politics of many states.

How Black landowners in eastern North Carolina are recovering generational wealth lost to industry encroachment.

The contemporary rise of Christian nationalism in the US is a reactionary response to the country’s liberalization over the past half-century.

How a landmark Supreme Court decision was shaped by the racist idea that poor children can’t learn.

C.R. Patterson & Sons of Greenfield became the first Black-owned automobile manufacturer in 1915. More than a century later, it remains the only known one.

In the 1960s, Annette Gordon-Reed was the first Black child to enroll in a white school in her hometown. Now she reflects on having a new school there named for her.

When it comes to protecting our personal privacy, we’re not in Kansas anymore.

Reparations must be rooted in a political context that will safeguard rather than erode the gains they make towards justice.

Recent years have witnessed a record number of challenges against books, especially in school libraries. But attempts to ban certain books isn't new in the U.S.

Written during World War II, Bungleton Green and the Mystic Commandos imagined a future liberated from racism and inequality.

We see our history of racism against Black Americans as distinct from our immigration policy, but the two are actually deeply intertwined.

Today, the military is perhaps the largest integrated institution in the US. But how it came to be this way reveals a history of racism and resistance.

Many groups who identify as Indigenous don’t claim to be first peoples; many who came first don’t claim to be Indigenous. Can the idea escape its colonial past?

Georgia’s Richard Russell was an unrepentant racist. You’d think a name change would be a no-brainer. And yet...

The Florida governor’s long-ignored 2011 work, "Dreams From Our Founding Fathers," reveals a distinct vision of American history.

Some see the reaction to Sen. Fetterman’s announcement as a sign of progress, but that’s less true than you might think.

The California Historical Society contrasts how Chinese people were portrayed in the press with the dignified studio portraits taken in Chinatown.

On "Sesame Street," Delgado was able to build a character who challenged stereotypes. Luis was a business owner, a neighbor, and later a husband and father.

How an old textbook lodged itself in the heart of New Orleans’ self-mythology.

“Paper City” explores the forgotten firebombing of Japan’s capital.

A century ago, physical fitness was part of a strange subculture, where strong bodies were extraordinary and meant to placed on pedestals for people to observe.

Did you know that there was a hidden utopia of formerly enslaved people located in the mountains of Appalachia?

Sing Sing's football team, The Black Sheep, ascended to fame even though its players were incarcerated. One player was so good, he signed with the Eagles.

How Emily Dickinson, scientists, and other writers theorized plant intelligence in the nineteenth century.

An interview with the author of "The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism."