Excerpts

Curated stories from around the web.
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Painting of the US army entering the city of Guadalupe Hildaglo
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The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo: Annotated

Signed February 2, 1848, the treaty compelled Mexico to cede 55 percent of its territory, bringing more than 525,000 square miles under US sovereignty.
George W. Bush on the day of the 9/11 attacks, which were used to publicly justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq. But by many accounts, the plan to invade Iraq had already started taking shape months before.

George W. Bush Misrepresented Our Work at CIA to Sell the Iraq Invasion

Two former CIA officials weigh in: "It's time to call him what he is: 'A liar.'"
An NYPD police car on the parade route on 59th Street during the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York in 2016.
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Police Cars Are a Form of PR — and the Message Is Always the Same

Police champions have long wielded new technology as a tool to project authority and legitimacy, while deflecting criticism.
Illustration of George W. Bush on a missile towards U.S.

Lie by Lie: A Timeline of How We Got Into Iraq

Mushroom clouds, duct tape, Judy Miller, Curveball. Recalling how Americans were sold a bogus case for invasion.
Malcolm Harris, left, and the cover of his book "Palo Alto," right. (Photo by Julia Burke)

The Obscene Invention of California Capitalism

A new history examines Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, the West Coast's settler ideology, and recent turbulence in the world of tech.
Newspaper profile of the policeman who arrested President Grant.

The Police Officer Who Arrested a President

It was 1872 and the commander-in-chief kept riding his horse too fast through the streets of Washington.
French pharmacist and self-help guru Émile Coué waves from the deck of a ship, circa 1923. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

America Was Obsessed with This Self-Help Craze 100 Years Ago

Émile Coué, a French apothecary, started an “autosuggestion” craze that was the biggest thing in America in the early 1920s, practiced by millions every day.
Google's word occurences tool shows the word "teenager" appear around 1940, with an exponential increase in occurences up through the 2000s.

Teenagers Didn't Always Exist

So where were those angsty kids?
Polar bear walks across melting ice in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
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Did One Photograph Change the Fate of the Arctic Wildlife Refuge?

What the political fight over a photo teaches us about the power of art, grassroots activism and images.
Shades of green.
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Green Sprigs of Courage

How the mythologizing of the Union Army’s Irish Brigade helped dispel anti-Irish sentiment.
Inflatable rat known as "Scabby" in midtown New York City in 2019.

Scabby the Rat Is an American Labor Icon. Why Are His Manufacturers Disowning Him?

The frightening character who appears amid US union disputes can be traced back to a single factory, which wasn’t unionized.
Climate activists march to the U.S. Capitol after the “Farmers for Climate Action: Rally for Resilience” on March 7 in D.C. (Paul Morigi/Getty Images)
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Farmers Are Mobilizing for Action. It’s Not the First Time.

In the 1970s, a family farm movement famously mobilized in “tractorcades” at the Capitol to try to prevent farm foreclosures and keep farmers on the land.
Yoshitaka Watanabe family photo: from left Yoshitaka Watanabe, Toshiko, Masao, Kimiko, Tabo, Shigeo, Shizue Watanabe.

No, My Japanese American Parents Were Not 'Interned' During WWII. They Were Incarcerated.

The Los Angeles Times will no longer use "internment" to describe the mass incarceration of 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry during World War II.

Is Corned Beef Really Irish?

The rise and fall and rise of the traditional St. Patrick's Day meal.

Why the Black National Anthem Is Lifting Every Voice to Sing

Scholars agree the song, endowed with its deep history of Black pride, speaks to the universal human condition.
Screenwriter Dalton Trumbo with his wife Cleo at the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings in 1947. Bertoldt Brecht can be seen in the background.

Monopolywood: Why the Paramount Accords Should Not Be Repealed

If studios can again harness the income from exhibition, we may see a return of traditional vertical integration.
A police officer stands beside a crashed automobile, 1905. (Photo by Robert Alexander / Getty Images)

The Reckless History of the Automobile

In "The Car," Bryan Appleyard sets out to celebrate the freedom these vehicles granted. But what if they were a dangerous technology from the start?
Emissions from Union Carbide’s Ferro-Alloy Plant, Charleston, West Virginia, May 1973

The Lost Promise of Environmental Rights

As environmental rights seem on the verge of a comeback, it’s worth remembering why they once seemed so promising, and why that promise remains unfulfilled.
U.S. soldier in Iraq

Iraq Veterans, 20 Years Later: ‘I Don’t Know How to Explain the War to Myself’

Nearly 20 years after their deployment to Iraq, veterans grapple with their younger selves and try to make sense of the war.
Hands holding a sign in that reads "DC statehood is racial justice."
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Republicans’ Anti-Democratic, Anti-Black Plans for D.C. Are a 19th-Century Throwback

The same ideas that have harmed D.C. for more than a century are again rearing their ugly head.
Cover page of "Cotton Mather's Spanish Lessons." Beige cover with a small red image of a tonsured monastic scribe with a book in front of him, evidentally engaged in scholarship.

Structures of Belonging and Nonbelonging

A Spanish-language pamphlet by Cotton Mather explodes the Black-versus-white binary that dominates most discussions of race in our time.
Sketch of a bedroom with a double bed, a prison courtyard outside the window.
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Controversy and Conjugal Visits

Conjugal visits were first allowed as incentives for the forced labor of incarcerated Black men, the practice expanding from there. Is human touch a right?
Two unnamed Black officers in the Union Army.

Richard Wright’s Civil War Cipher

Archival records of Black southerners' military desertion tribunals can be read as a distinct form of political action.
Americans with signs and a banner Abdisellam Hassen Ahmed and his family to the US.
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Welcome Corps, the Newest Idea in Refugee Resettlement, Has Deep Roots

The new program might strengthen personal connections to refugees, but history shows there are potential downsides, as well.
A poster made by Ghazal Foroutan showing solidarity with the women of Iran
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Was She Really Rosie?

The unlikely, true story of the Westinghouse “We Can Do It” work-incentive poster that became an international emblem of women’s empowerment.
January 6, 1947 Harlem Globetrotters ad.

The Harlem Globetrotters and the Social Significance of Sports

The Globetrotters have always been far more than just a comic exhibition team, just as sports have always meant much more than escapism.
Young girl triplets wearing identical clothes sitting on a bed.

Posed Riddles

Seeing through empathy with Diane Arbus.
Daniel Ellsberg at a press conference in New York City, 1972.

My Fifty Years with Dan Ellsberg

The man who changed America.
A sex worker on Cass Avenue, Detroit, 1965.

Red Lights, Blue Lines

Three recent books examine the discrimination and hypocrisy at the heart of policing “vice.”
Woodrow Wilson and his wife, Edith, in 1916.

How Edith Wilson Kept Herself—and Her Husband—in the White House

A new book about the first lady reveals how she and the ailing President Woodrow Wilson silenced their critics.
White pillars broken in pieces, forming an X.

The Right Side of History

How should historians respond to the urgency of this current political moment?
Two campers kissing at Camp Cejwin, 1982.

The Jewish Summer Camp Hookup Scene Is Real. Here’s Why It Was Built.

All coed camps can be like this. But Jewish ones were different.
President Jimmy Carter standing behind a podium.

Jimmy Carter's African Legacy: Peacemaker, Negotiator and Defender of Rights

Carter’s work in Zimbabwe forms a significant and underappreciated part of his legacy.
Ricardo and Enrique Flores Magón at the Los Angeles County Jail, circa 1916.

An American Story

Kelly Lytle Hernández’s new book chronicles the tumultuous period leading up to the Mexican Revolution, casting the border as ground zero for continental change.
Eilhu Root.

The Shameful Imperialist Legacy of Elihu Root, Godfather of Corporate Law

How a celebrated corporate lawyer named Elihu Root became the driving force behind some of the worst U.S. atrocities ever perpetrated abroad.
Anna Julia Cooper, portrait sitting in a chair, and Mary Church Terrell, side portrait.

‘Moving Unapologetically to the Forefront’: How an Archive Is Preserving the Black Feminist Movement

The Black Woman’s Organizing Archive highlights work in the 19th and 20th centuries that benefitted Black women and American society as a whole.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference on March 3 in Fort Washington, Md.
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The Surprising Roots of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Idea of National Divorce

Greene probably has visions of suburban Atlanta in the 1990s and 2000s, not the Civil War.
Botanical drawing of a pumpkin, curubita pepo.

A Brief History of Pumpkin Pie in America

One obvious change occurred at around the turn of the 19th century, when the rapid expansion of the canning industry brought canned pumpkin to every market.
Book cover of "Grain and Fire: A History of American Baking."

A Fresh Look at the History of Pecan Pie

The pecan pie as we know it is very much a twentieth-century creation, so if you ever see a recipe entitled “Old South Pecan Pie,” you know it’s bogus.
Homesteader Jack Whinery and his family.

Savoring Pie Town

Sixty-five years after Russell Lee photographed New Mexico homesteaders coping with the Depression, a Lee admirer visits the town for a fresh slice of life
Apple pie, apples, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

Apple Pie Is Not All That American

Neither apples nor the pie originally came from America, but Americans have made this dish their own
Panting of a woman lounging with a book, titled “Dolce far niente” (The Sweetness of Doing Nothing), by Auguste Toulmouche, 1877.

We’re Distracted. That’s Nothing New.

Ever since Thoreau headed to Walden, our attention has been wandering.
A "political funeral" during the height of the HIV/AIDs epidemic.

The Right to Grieve

To demand the freedom to mourn—not on the employer’s schedule, but in our own time—is to reject the cruel rhythms of the capitalist status quo.
Woman at Saint Elizabeth’s Hospital from behind.
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History Says NYC Mayor’s Mental Health Plan is Deeply Flawed

Involuntarily committing people with serious mental illness, however well intended, has long served to remove them from society instead of providing treatment.
A U.S. Army officer posing after a battle at the Baghdad airport, April 2003.

Blundering Into Baghdad

The right—and wrong—lessons of the Iraq War.
Oscar statues.

What the Oscars Represent: Meritocracy Without Merit

How the institution’s reactionary origins still leak into today’s film culture.
Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
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The Big Business Campaign That Has Shaped 40 Years of GOP Rhetoric

The philosophy that drives the GOP's attacks on government and how it has fueled some of our biggest problems.
3 of the Tanesar goddesses placed in a wooden crate lined with police tape.

The Goddess Complex

A set of revered stone deities stolen from a temple in northwestern India can tell us much about our current reckoning with antiquities trafficking.
Fox News studios in New York in 2018.
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Fox News’s Handling of Election Lies Was Extreme but Far From Unusual

News organizations air lies from political figures more often than you’d think, but for very different reasons than Fox News.
Children reading a storybook with a teacher.

What We've Learned In the 50 Years Since One Report Introduced the Black-White Achievement Gap

A Harvard education professor explains how far we've come in answering some of the most important questions in education since the famous Coleman report.
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