Excerpts

American special operators brought their tactics in the global war on terror back home.

If he wins the New York City mayoral election, Zohran Mamdani will not be in totally uncharted territory.

Donald Trump seems stuck in the 80s.

An oral history of the coverage: what the United States attempted to cover up.

While the events that led to the Jonestown massacre included tragedy, the life—and death—of one of its residents offers lessons on community and resilience.

In the darkest days of the Iraq War, the highly secretive Joint Special Operations Command emerged as one of the most influential institutions in government.

The emotional roller coaster that changed the course of the Civil Rights Movement.

“Horses were a part of the daily fabric of life for many enslaved Black people.”

This digital project explores Arab American History through the 1907 business directory titled Dr. Abdou’s Travels.

Abolitionists built a monument to liberty and free speech steps from Indepdence Hall in Philadelphia. Then a mob burned it to the ground.

Elbridge Ayer Burbank’s haunting paintings capture a likeness that was only ever real from the vantage point of a White man with a gun, canvas, or camera.

Once dismissed as passé, since recast as a secular saint, Baldwin’s true message remains more unsettling than readers in either camp recognize.

The 21st century American city was forged in the embers of the 1970s arson wave.

How meatpacking remained domestic.

A new biography shows that his life was more complex than his viral fame suggests.

To some, the fires lit in New York in the late seventies signaled rampant crime; to others, rebellion. But maybe they were signs of something else entirely.

In 1921, White rioters destroyed a beacon of Black prosperity and security. This is what happened, and why it still matters today.

On teaching in a red state, the silences in our history lessons, and all I never learned about my hometown.

The story of Lucky and his service with the U.S. Marines in the Pacific Theater.

Offshoots from the “Tree of Life” traveled from Mesopotamia to the Levant to the United States, beguiling everyone with their toothsome confections.

On the grim legacy of Ronald Reagan.

The Bureau for the Repression of Communist Activities, known for its blood-spattered record of torture and political killings, was backed by the CIA.

Far from being a new debate, the discussion over extending home rule to Washingtonians has been around as long as the District of Columbia itself.

For decades, US hostility towards Russia and continued NATO encroachment ever further into Eastern Europe have laid the groundwork for the current crisis.

He didn’t give the tech right new ideas—not really. What he gave them was permission.

Right after slavery ended in the United States, thousands of Black people, formerly enslaved by white slave holders in the South, flooded Washington, DC.

Do archivists have political motivations too?

In the 1950s, the CIA funded efforts to smuggle great works of literature into the Eastern Bloc.

Humans have long tried to understand a quicksilver quality that defies explanation.

Part of what defines Pittsburgh literature is the transcendent in the prosaic, the sacred in the profane. An intimation of beauty amid a kingdom of ugliness.

Exploring the correspondence of June Jordan and Audre Lorde, Marina Magloire assembles an archive of a Black feminist falling-out over Zionism.

Ideological entrepreneur, architect of ruin.

Reflecting on his decades-long career, the historian considers what his field of study owes to the public.

The financial crisis of the University of Chicago sheds light on the forces that are "corroding ideals, and wasting money" throughout American higher education.

On campaign finance, economic policy, and the 2024 US election.

Stanley Greenberg has spent decades answering the question of how water arrives in our taps and building interest in this vast and impressive system.

For years, the Office of Technology Assessment helped Congress see around corners on science and tech. Its 1995 shutdown left lawmakers flying blind.

Originally a secret society, the National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry today is an important health and education resource in rural communities.

Americans’ love affair with the South Pacific masks the US Navy’s devastating impact on the region’s people and environment.

The first modern presidential death was also the first medical mystery America refused to let go.

In 1966, police shot a young Puerto Rican man. What followed created a blueprint for a new kind of solidarity.

In public schools around the country, conservatives are succeeding in their long effort to replace the word “democracy” with “constitutional republic.”

American Indian woman used Christianity to maintain their agency and kinship networks.

By reviving the Presidential Fitness Test, Trump is joining his predecessors in setting forth a competition that he would likely fail at.

The attempts by his administration to control the ways Americans engage with our nation’s history threaten to weaken patriotism, not strengthen it.

He has produced a crisis much like the one the colonists faced two and a half centuries ago. Now it’s our responsibility to uphold the Founders’ legacy.

The often-overlooked institutions of the federal government truly do matter and so do the individuals who lead those institutions and give them direction.

It is time for conservatives to reclaim their criticism of the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Educators can fight back against Trump’s attacks by re-embracing “old-fashioned” disciplines and ideas.

Tracing markers from near and distant past and unspooling the narratives about the imprints we leave on the planet for what they say about the future.