Excerpts

Curated stories from around the web.
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Skeletons in a museum posed with varying postures, as if they are performing different tasks.

Why Americans Are Obsessed With Poor Posture

The 20th-century movement to fix slouching questions the moral and political dimensions of addressing bad backs over wider public health concerns.
A girl in Native American tribal regalia being crowned as homecoming queen.

The Complex Politics of Tribal Enrollment

How did the U.S. government become involved in “adjudicating Indianness”?
Men on horses and with swords exploring the a canyon.

Scratching the Surface

How geology shaped American culture.
Parade of cars with Donald Trump flags and American flags.

The “Fascist” With a Popular Majority

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?

The Second Abolition

Robin Blackburn’s sweeping history of slavery and freedom in the 19th century.
Protesters storming the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

What’s the Difference Between a Rampaging Mob and a Righteous Protest?

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

The Frenemies Who Fought to Bring Birth Control to the U.S.

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

What the New Right Learned in School

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

Review of "America's Philosopher: John Locke in American Intellectual Life"

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.
Supreme Court justices William O. Douglas, Felix Frankfurter, and Owen J. Roberts at the White House.

FDR’s Compliant Justices

The Supreme Court’s deference to FDR during World War II resulted in unjustifiable ethical breaches.
A standardized test and a pencil, with answers bubbled in.

The Rotting of the College Board

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

Today’s Echoes of the First ‘America First’

Charles Lindbergh’s ideology prefigured Donald Trump’s—and was rightly disgraced.
President Woodrow Wilson riding as a passenger in a two seater car with his chauffeur, George Howard.

States’ Rights or Inalienable Rights?

Some early progressives may have been advocates of states’ rights, but they misunderstood the philosophy of the American Founding.
"REM" musicians pose in front of a mirror.

How R.E.M. Created Alternative Music

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.
Author Sanora Babb, with her husband James Wong Howe, in their library.

The Woman Who Defined the Great Depression

John Steinbeck based “The Grapes of Wrath” on Sanora Babb’s notes. But she was writing her own American epic.
Image of the outline of the United States in red fire.

A Dark Reminder of What American Society Has Been and Could Be Again

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.
"The Underground Railroad" (1893) by Charles T. Webber depicts a fugitive slave reaching the North.

The Abolitionist Titan You’ve Never Heard Of

John Rankin, minister and fierce abolitionist, is a man worth remembering in our moment.
A drawing of protestors wrestling a tax collector to the ground.

A Prudent First Amendment

Often, the proper scope of the First Amendment can be determined only by considering both text and context.
The Fallen Angels on the Wing by Gustave Doré, a dark painting of angels falling from heaven.

The Political Afterlife of Paradise Lost

From white supremacists to black activists, readers have sought moral legitimacy in Milton’s epic poem.
Johnny Carson hosting the Tonight Show.

The Amazing, Disappearing Johnny Carson

Carson pioneered a new style of late-night hosting—relaxed, improvisatory, risk-averse, and inscrutable.
"Stayed on Freedom" book cover

A History of Black Power We Need and Deserve

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.
A Public Health Services physician checking a woman immigrating into the United States for illness.

How the Irish Became Everything

Two new books explore the messy complexities of immigration—from the era of Lincoln to Irish New York.
Portrait of Ena and Betty Wertheimer by John Singer Sargent, 1901.

Friend of the Family

Jean Strouse explores the relationship between the Anglo-Jewish Wertheimers and John Singer Sargent, who painted twelve portraits of them.
A drawing of two parents and a child running at a border, their silhouettes being sliced by a chainlink fence.

The Crime of Human Movement

Two recent books about our immigration system reveal its long history of exploiting vulnerable individuals for financial gain.
A stuffed bear in a room of empty children's beds at Willowbrook Hospital.

The Horrors of Hepatitis Research

The abusive experiments on mentally disabled children at Willowbrook State School were only one part of a much larger unethical research program.
A black and white photo of an American soldier on patrol in Kabul, Afghanistan, 2005.

God’s Directive

In the wake of the September 11 attacks, evangelical American missionaries followed military tanks into Afghanistan and Iraq to convert Muslims.
Painting depicting the Salem Witch Trials.

Did the Witch Trials Ever Truly Come to an End?

Marion Gibson’s research rigorously traces the legal and human aspects of the trials through today.
A group of children spinning on a merry-go-round.

The Parenting Panic

Contrary to both far right and mainstream center-left, there’s no epidemic of chosen childlessness.
Title page of Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Searching for the Elusive Man Who Inspired Uncle Tom’s Cabin

John Andrew Jackson spent a night at Harriet Beecher Stowe’s home as he fled north. Why do so few traces of his visit remain?
A view of Wall Street and Federal Hall in the Financial District in New York City.

In the 1970s, the Left Put a Good Crisis to Waste

In "Counterrevolution," Melinda Cooper reads the 1970s economic crisis as an elite revolt rather than proof of the New Deal order’s unsustainability.
Paintings by John Singer Sargent: Asher Wertheimer, 1898 (left) and Hylda, Almina and Conway, Children of Asher Wertheimer, 1905 (center), London. Portrait of Mrs. Asher B. Wertheimer, 1898 (right).

A Sudden, Revealing Searchlight

On Jean Strouse and the art of biography.
Senator J.D. Vance and Patrick Deneen at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

Toward a Christian Postliberal Left

A truly Christian postliberalism would imagine and enact an alternative modernity with a different standard of progress.
Ronald Reagan preparing for a broadcast on Voice of America.

Whose Ronald Reagan?

Fighting over the legacy of a conservative hero in the era of Trump.
George Washington

Drink Like a Founding Father

Make one of President George Washington's favorite cocktails.
Netanyahu, Trump, Orban, Modi.

The Reactionary Bind

In assessing the rise of the global anti-democracy movement, the United States must look inward as well as outward.
An old, crumbling Victorian house with figures from horror, including Toni Collette in Hereditary, a zombie, Edgar Allen Poe, and Stephen King.

American Horror Stories

It just might be the great American art form. You can thank the residents of Salem for that.
Andrew Jackson meets a Creek military officer.

The Forgotten War that Made America

The overlooked Creek War set the tone for America to come.
Photo by Ralph Ellison of men standing by a street in New York City.

Ralph Ellison’s Alchemical Camera

The novelist's aestheticizing impulse contrasts with the relentless seriousness of his observations and critiques of American society.
Black and white photo of Boston’s Old Corner bookstore (1900).

Bookselling Out

“The Bookshop” tells the story of American bookstores in thirteen types. Its true subject is not how bookstore can survive, but how they should be.
Democratic donkey necktie.

The Consultants Who Lost Democrats the Working Class

The rivalry of two men tells the story of how Democrats fumbled with their traditional base—and how they can win again.
Thomas Carlyle.

A Fundamentally Anti-Democratic Tradition: Zack Beauchamp's "The Reactionary Spirit"

Where conservatives may seek to conserve their democratic systems, reactionaries by their nature seek to weaken or abolish them.
Sanora Babb

The Woman Who Would Be Steinbeck

John Steinbeck beat Sanora Babb to the great American Dust Bowl novel—using her field notes. What do we owe her today?

Eroticize the Hood

A new book revamps Newark's reputation as unsexy, violent, destitute, defiantly declaring it “a place of desire, love, eroticism, community, and resistance.”

How John Lewis Put a Legacy of Heroism to Use

As the civil-rights era receded, his personal heroism loomed larger. But movement politics didn’t easily translate into party politics.
Illustration of the Constitution, with the hand of a Founder writing with a feather, and the other side a 21st century hand writing with a pen.

The Supreme Court’s Originalists Are Fundamentally Wrong About History

The Founders didn’t believe the Constitution had a fixed meaning. So why do so many of the justices?
Cover of American Scary by Jeremy Dauber.

The Historical Seeds of Horror in "American Scary"

Jeremy Dauber's new book explores the themes and origins of the American horror genre.
Sen. Joe McCarthy confers with Roy Cohn during a hearing of the House Un-American Activities Committee.

A Not-So-Hostile Takeover

Long before the rise of Trump, the American conservative mainstream enjoyed a complex partnership with the Far Right.
Cover of "A Great Disorder" by Richard Slotkin, depicting the outline of the United States made out of cracked stone, overlaid with the American flag.

American Mythology

Is the United States a prisoner of its own mythology?
A World History Encloypedia graphic image/illustration of The Feudal Society in Medieval Europe.

American Feudalism

A liberalism that divides humanity into a master class and a slave class deserves an asterisk as “white liberalism.”
A monkey listening to a radio with headphones.

The Scopes Trial and the Two Visions of US Democracy

A new history revisits “the Trial of the Century” and its legacy in contemporary politics.
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