Excerpts

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.

A reading from 1920 on the fights that follow the 19th Amendment: “Now at last we can begin.”

Campus speech debates reveal a history of distorted narratives, balancing free speech, moral standards, and generational conflicts in U.S. universities.

The popular reception of thongs, bras, boy shorts and other intimate items.

Considering the impact of the 1959 earthquake that shook our most famous national park.

Ryan White helped challenge existing understandings of the AIDS epidemic. But his story also reinforced arbitrary divisions between the guilty and the innocent.

At the turn of the century in upstate New York, one tiny town learned there was money to make in the jailing of Chinese migrants.

The Black Legion was a white supremacist fascist group headquartered in Lima, Ohio. Its worst deeds are lost to memory, but they shouldn’t be.

On the origins of America's hegemonic foreign policy.

“Mary Mallon was a cook. And her story, first and foremost, is the story of a cook.”

A narrative not of brain drain but of Black aspiration.

When video games went mainstream, the Pentagon realized their potential as a promotional tool, spending hundreds of millions of dollars on war-based games.

Remembering the lead-up to the 1979 Greensboro Massacre.

In which John B. Calhoun begins to study the lifestyles of rodents, and the public listens.

On the transatlantic development of pilsners and lagers from Central Europe to the Americas.

The same legal and cultural struggles will await the next critical infrastructural technology, and the next.

Progressive forces in US labor took a stand in solidarity with trade unionists facing murderous repression in El Salvador.

The systematic post-war displacement of communities of color.

On Irving Howe and the New Left.

On the literary and cinematic legacy of white supremacy in the United States.

Max Gordon, Prohibition, and the transformative creation of the Village Vanguard.

The little known history of 19th-century New York City.

An oral history of the tabloid race to cover the serial killer.

Remembering my father’s imprisonment at a Japanese prison camp.

How an American arms dealer and a surplus of guns in Europe after World War II popularized gun ownership.

Jonathan Schell’s account of the US military’s destruction of the village of Ben Suc in Vietnam laid bare the problem with many American interventions.

"It is only stereotypes of Indians as primitive that make their power to transform markets surprising."

In contemporary publishing, novels fixated on the past rather than the present have garnered the most attention and prestige.

On civilians’ opinion of killing civilians by air during World War II.

On the independence of the Muscogee Nation.

Small wars have been used as a foundation of global order. The belief that limited violence preserves peace serves imperial control.

In the 1970s, some athletes began questioning the alliance between sports, conservative Christianity, and politics.

“Allotment”—and its repercussions.

On the early history of New York City's northernmost borough.

Exploring the role mainline Protestants have played in promoting the idea of America as a Christian country.

Any attempt to understand the complexities of American economic thought without considering the significant role of religious beliefs is incomplete.

It was no coincidence that public school secularization and desegregation were happening, and failing, simultaneously.

Depictions of Antietam couldn’t possible capture the magnitude of the battle’s horror.