Excerpts

Once a nation of movers, the US has lost its “culture of mobility,” a new book argues. That’s been a disaster for housing affordability and economic progress.

In the aftermath of the American Revolution, southern slaveholders were thinking about what a prison should look like for a society that was economically and socially dependent on slavery.

Do judges have the power to enforce their rulings if the executive branch refuses to comply?

Mifepristone took longer to get approved than most drugs—but not because it was unsafe.

What the President’s confrontations with Panama, Greenland, Canada, and Colombia suggest about his expansionist vision.

The same Christian ideology that inspired J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI to surveil MLK is alive and well in the Trump administration.

The Catholic order has branches all over the world, and a deep history of unethical and illegal behavior.

Frances Perkins’ challenged the United States’ restrictive immigration policies as FDR’s Secretary of Labor.

A historian of U.S. empire discusses nuclear Greenland, selling Puerto Rico, and the renaissance of William McKinley.

Jimmy Carter is associated with an idealistic “human rights agenda.” In reality, he was paving the way for Ronald Reagan’s aggressive anti-communism.

“The world didn’t give It, but the world can’t take It away.”

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

"Published by the Author" explores the resourcefulness of Black writers of the nineteenth century.

Trump is often described as unprecedented, but in winning a non-consecutive second term, he has a significant antecedent: Grover Cleveland.

Quinn Slobodian and Jennifer Mittelstadt discuss their research on the meanings of “globalism” and “sovereignty” throughout history.

A conversation with historian Zachary Schrag and his father Philip Schrag about their multi-generational encounters with nuclear threats.

How incarcerated people have become separated from American society.

“Postpartum depression” encompasses various debilitating changes in mood that can occur after giving birth. How did that language come to be?

An expert on white nationalism explains how such demonizing rhetoric incubates and spreads—and what sets this particular episode apart.

Demography has not managed to be destiny in the past half-century—but predictions of a millenarian shift have not lost their appeal.

During the Cold War, the AFL-CIO actively participated in efforts to suppress left-wing labor movements abroad.

Klaxon horns, once standard safety equipment, disappeared from the roads after World War I. But the tensions they exposed about urban noise still echo.

Scientists and lawmakers in the 70s knew more than we think they did about climate change and the impacts of fossil fuel regulations.

The author of "Cahokia Jazz" reflects on the similarities between historical fiction and science fiction, and the imaginative space opened by archival silences.

The Democratic Party, and the US political system as a whole, is a very strange beast.

An animation historian on Reddy Kilowatt, the cartoon charged with electrifying everything in the early 20th century.

1934 world champion runner Zdenek Koubek, boxer Imane Khelif, and how far we haven’t come on gender in sports.

Discussing the little-known lineage of leftists who helped shape modern ideas of free trade.

A new book takes on a diagnosis invented to cover up police killings: that men of color are “combusting as a result of their aggressiveness.”

Deindustrialization has helped create a right-wing turn in many Midwestern towns. Long traditions of labor militancy can explain why it hasn’t in others.

A new book explores the history of presidents who abused their constitutional power and the citizen movements that stopped them.

“Night Flyer” expands Harriet Tubman’s legacy to include her family, community and “eco-spiritual worldview.”

Tracing financial capital—from J. P. Morgan to BlackRock.

John Ganz’s “When the Clock Broke” renders the signal political battles of the present in an entirely new light.

In the early nineties, the country turned against the establishment and right-wing populists thrived. A new history reassesses their impact.

A new graphic book unpacks the role that some White women played in suppressing voting rights for all — and the lessons today in the fight for universal ballot access.

“The Other Olympians: Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports” upends long-held assumptions about trans people’s participation in sports.

“An Ideal for Living” explores the fascinating backstory of a mini music format.

A conversation with the legal scholar on why it is unusual that the Constitution is core to American national identity.

What we can learn from the history of maritime folk music.

An interview with Taylor Brown, author of the novel "Rednecks."

On how the fringe ideas of a set of American neoliberals became a new and pervasive way of life.

On revisiting the anti-imperialism of the 1960s and ’70s amid the return of left internationalism.

The history of the property tax system and its structural defects that have led to widespread discrimination against Black Americans.

A conversation with the activists and writers about their wide-ranging history of the politics of the common good and togetherness.

An interview with sociologist and historian of psychiatry Andrew Scull about the history and legacy of psychiatric deinstitutionalization.

"I was always working on a theory of America."

Historian Robin Blackburn has completed a trilogy of books that provide a comprehensive Marxist account of slavery in the New World.

From the 1880s to the 1940s, New York City was transformed—and so too was the New York City Police Department.

A conversation with John David Waiheʻe III, former Governor of Hawai‘i, on the U.S. apology to the Hawaiian people.