Excerpts

In 1966, the conductor arrived in Vienna with a mission: to restore Gustav Mahler’s place in 20th-century music.

In the 1990s, an entire industry was born of trying to convince Americans that Beanie Babies were a great investment opportunity.

In the 1930s, approximately half a million Mexicans left the United States. Many families had American-born children to whom Mexico was a foreign land.

The public and private battles waged across Europe and the United States during the 1918 flu pandemic.

Dean Acheson, President Truman’s prim, patrician undersecretary of state, was sitting in his office on February 21, 1947, when he received a visitor.

On the movement that fought for old-age pensions during the Great Depression.

On the ongoing battle to desegregate schools across America throughout the 1960s.

For historian Russell Shorto, it was all about water.

In 1978, Jimmy Carter signed the Airline Deregulation Act. It gave rise to some truly miserable air travel—and neoliberalism.

Vincent Conlon’s secret life in the United States as an operative and gun-running Irish rebel.

On the scholarship and intellectual legacies of Ulrich Bonnell Phillips, William Dunning and other academics.

Who decides how history gets written?

In 1885, white rioters murdered dozens of their Asian neighbors in Rock Springs, Wyoming. 140 years later, the story of the atrocity is still being unearthed.

Was the pro wrestler known as “the Cuban Wonder” really the first Black world champion?

On the early career of the actor-cum-politician who changed America.

Video games, violence and the enduring allure of the vigilante hero.

The scene at the 1964 Republican National Convention, when Barry Goldwater was nominated and black Republicans’ worst fears about their party were confirmed.

If world leaders had been clearer about the sanctions Putin would face, they might have deterred his invasion of Ukraine.

On the case that provoked the courts to decide if the federal government had jurisdiction to exercise American criminal law over Native peoples on Native lands.

The Puritan origins of modern ideas about migration.

In the summer of 1842, young Abraham Lincoln’s razor-sharp wit almost got him into a whole heap of trouble.

Video has become our dominant cultural medium, yet we lack reliable archives for the audiovisual record.

How historians changed their approach, from the 1960s to the present.

The U.S. was once the world’s most geographically mobile society. Now we’re stuck in place—and that’s a very big problem.

Confederates kidnapped free Black people to sell into slavery. After the war, two women sought help from high places to track down their lost loved ones.

On Pierrepoint B. Noyes, H.G. Wells, and the “Superweapons” of early science-fiction.

Levity and play — eerily combined with anxiety, terror, and deadly violence — shaped the identity and image of Early Republic militias.

And why so many people remember the tale so differently.

On the slow path to federal action on emancipation during the Civil War.

Jails have been foundational to immigration enforcement for over a century—and have always operated with a staggering absence of oversight and public awareness.

On the ongoing legal struggle for educational and racial equality across the United States.

In the 1970s, a crop of books purporting to provide a scientific basis for gender inequality met sharp criticism from figures like Gould.

On John Huggins, Angela Y. Davis, and the complex history of an oft-misunderstood political movement.

Queen Marie-Louise outlived most of her family, yet her story about the revolution and its aftermath was rarely consulted by those writing the era’s history.

When the 1930 Hays Code banned pregnancy in film, birds took over the business of birth.

The ruling class used false claims about white women’s sexual virtue to regulate sexuality. But the “white slavery” panic was also about race, class and labor.

At universities, American Marxism has led to good scholarship, but it’s also encouraged hyper-specialization and the use of impenetrable jargon.

Why rock overtook every other genre to define our understanding of America at war.

Rains of blood and frogs, mysterious disappearances, objects in the sky: these were the anomalies that fascinated Charles Fort in his Book of the Damned.

Using film and advertising to sell capitalism and nationalism to immigrants in the early 20th century.

The postwar moment of a distinctive new American novel—Nabokov’s "Lolita"— is also the moment in which William Faulkner finally gained recognition.

Fire!! was a pathbreaking showcase for Black artists and writers “ready to emotionally serve a new day and a new generation.”

On the rise of the narcotic farm model, a radical reimagining of the nation’s approach to addiction.

The founding father’s long-overlooked passion for scientific inquiry.

On Robert Moses, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the culture of environmental waste.

The story of how Ed Carnes became a judge offers crucial lessons for those who hope to unwind the policies of mass incarceration.

In Wilson’s chivalric framework, women were required to be submissive precisely so that men could protect the weaker sex.

A new Smithsonian book reckons with the enduring legacies of slavery and capitalism.

On the lengths newspaper publishers took to reach new subscribers — and then drive them away — in the 1930s.

Margaret Fuller and the first major work of American feminism.