Excerpts

Margaret Sanger and Mary Ware Dennett each had a different vision of reproductive freedom. Would reproductive rights be more secure if Dennett’s had prevailed?

In every generation, charlatans come along with a plan to make education better by spending less money on schools.

Humans love to imagine their own demise.

The question that remains at the end of the book concerns the meaning of “progressive” within an evangelical Christian church.

Understanding the reemergence of the Ku Klux Klan in the early twentieth century gives insight into the roots of today’s reactionary activists and policymakers.

Two new books examine how colonial logic has long been embedded within US carceral systems.

Second-wave feminists meant business—but they had a lot of fun at it, too.

A new collection of essays by David Montgomery shows how he used labor history as a means of grappling with the largest questions in American history.

A sweeping new history chronicles a century of unprecedented economic progress driven by markets and innovation.

The story of credit cards is the story of industry versus regulators. Industry won.

LGBTQ voters overwhelmingly went for Harris, but the idea that gay voters are always going to be solidly blue is a myth.

James Graham Wilson makes a compelling case that the under-celebrated example of Paul Nitze is both instructive and worthy of our emulation.

Why should American exceptionalism end at the red-light district?

The notion of political realignment in the Lone Star State is older than you think. It goes back to Giant, an acidic novel by Edna Ferber.

Many of us do not go gentle into that good night.

Susie Orbach’s 1978 book is a fascinating snapshot of diet and physical culture in a very different era.

Am 1884 guide to vice and crime by the founder of the world’s largest private detective agency.

On both sides of the color line, to own one’s home remains synonymous with freedom—even as real estate has proven itself to be relentlessly unequal.

Faith’s pivotal role in the outcome of the Civil War.

How politicians used the story of one young patient to neglect the AIDS crisis.

A new book considers the challenges of controlling the commercialization of college sports.

A set of peculiarly American anxieties has spread across continents.

A new book celebrates an American political dynasty dedicated to public service. Why have they been forgotten?

“The Golden Girls” reframed senior life as being about socializing and sex. But did the cultural narrative of advanced age as continued youth go too far?

A new history of the CPUSA reads like a Cold War throwback.

The 20th-century movement to fix slouching questions the moral and political dimensions of addressing bad backs over wider public health concerns.

How did the U.S. government become involved in “adjudicating Indianness”?

How geology shaped American culture.

Donald Trump’s victory will inevitably reopen the “fascism debate.” But does a populist whose appeal cuts across diverse groups truly fit the fascist profile?

Robin Blackburn’s sweeping history of slavery and freedom in the 19th century.

From the French Revolution to January 6th, crowds have been heroized and vilified. Now they’re a field of study.

Though Margaret Sanger and Mary Ware Dennett shared a mission, they took very different approaches. Their rivalry was political, sometimes even personal.

Many of today's most influential right-wing tactics and arguments have their roots in 1960s-era college campuses.

We see what we want to see from philosophers such as Locke not because he wrote for our time (or “all time”) but because we imagine he did.

The Supreme Court’s deference to FDR during World War II resulted in unjustifiable ethical breaches.

Testing is necessary. The SAT’s creator is not.

Charles Lindbergh’s ideology prefigured Donald Trump’s—and was rightly disgraced.

Some early progressives may have been advocates of states’ rights, but they misunderstood the philosophy of the American Founding.

In the cultural wasteland of the Reagan era, they showed that a band could have mass appeal without being cheesy, or nostalgic, or playing hair metal.

John Steinbeck based “The Grapes of Wrath” on Sanora Babb’s notes. But she was writing her own American epic.

How an obsessive hatred of immigrants and people of color and deep-seated fears about the empowerment of women led to the Klan’s rule in Indiana.

John Rankin, minister and fierce abolitionist, is a man worth remembering in our moment.

Often, the proper scope of the First Amendment can be determined only by considering both text and context.

From white supremacists to black activists, readers have sought moral legitimacy in Milton’s epic poem.

Carson pioneered a new style of late-night hosting—relaxed, improvisatory, risk-averse, and inscrutable.

A history that is as tactical as it is analytical, as global as it is local, and as based in love as it is in politics.

Two new books explore the messy complexities of immigration—from the era of Lincoln to Irish New York.

Jean Strouse explores the relationship between the Anglo-Jewish Wertheimers and John Singer Sargent, who painted twelve portraits of them.

Two recent books about our immigration system reveal its long history of exploiting vulnerable individuals for financial gain.

The abusive experiments on mentally disabled children at Willowbrook State School were only one part of a much larger unethical research program.