Excerpts

Curated stories from around the web.
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The entrance of Fischer Bros, a Jewish grocery store, with a line of people going out the door.

The Rise of the Jewish Grocer

From kosher butchers, fruit peddlers, and herring dealers on the Lower East Side to supermarket innovators across the country
Jimmy Carter and General Omar Torrijos shake hands after signing the Panama Canal Treaty in 1977

The Panama Canal Treaty Declassified

Kissinger warned: “This is no issue to face the world on. It looks like pure colonialism.”
Airplane flying over a muddy, congested road near the Hoover-Washington Airfield in the 1930s.

The Humble Beginnings of the National Airport

A swamp with a busy road going right through the middle, Washington’s airport was called “a disgrace.”
Justin Trudeau and Donald Trump.

The Beaver and the Eagle: A 200-Year-Old Argument

The left case for an independent Canada.
Louis Armstrong performs on the Kraft Music Hall TV show at NBC Studios in Brooklyn in June 1967 in New York.

Louis Armstrong’s Difficult Upbringing Revealed in Family Police Records

A new book reveals the jazz musician’s mother and sister were arrested several times for prostitution in New Orleans.

Edward C. Banfield and What Conservatism Used to Mean

Hard thinking on difficult and uncomfortable questions about how to keep everything from falling apart.
Ken Martin and Ben Wikler at a DNC forum.

Ken Martin, Ben Wikler, and the DNC Chair Race’s Midwestern Moment

The region has unique political traditions tailor-made for the momentum gathering behind economic populism in the Democratic Party.
Joseph McCarthy on a television screen.

No, We’re Not in a New McCarthy Era

Defending academic freedom doesn’t mean exaggerating the threats to it.
A crew of inmate firefighters begins to work on containment during the Hughes Fire in California in 2025.
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The Troubling Slavery-Era Origins of Inmate Firefighting

The history of enslaved firefighters offers a cautionary tale about the dangers of relying on involuntary labor to fight blazes.
A flag depicting a hand pulling back the American flag to reveal a Confederate flag.

Patriotic Education and the End of History

Or, a brief history of today's erasure of history.
Overhead view of neighborhood in the Palisades destroyed by wildfires.
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The L.A. Fires Expose the Problem With Conservation Policy

For more than a century, conservation policy has focused on economic development and wisely using natural resources.
A nurse passing a cup with methadone through a glass window.
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History Exposes the Flaw in RFK Jr.'s Drug Treatment Plan

Kennedy wants to create "wellness drug rehabilitation farms." But the U.S. tried it before, and it didn't work.
A doctor vaccinating a patient.
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The Origins of the Anti-Vaccination Movement

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s nomination to lead HHS reflects the rising power of an anti-vaccination movement more than 100 years in the making.
Woman in a hospital bed reading a pamphlet called "After the Abortion."

Her “Health and Thus Her Life”

Abortion exceptions in legal history.

The Other Side of Sherman’s March

The general’s campaign through the South is known for its brutality against civilians. For the enslaved who followed his army, though, it was a shot at freedom.
Painting of horsemen in the Caucus mountains.

The Reckless Creation of Whiteness

How an erroneous 18th-century story about the “Caucasian race” led to a centuries of prejudice and misapprehension.

The Historical Roots of Donald Trump’s Aggressive Nationalism

What the President’s confrontations with Panama, Greenland, Canada, and Colombia suggest about his expansionist vision.
Three identical pictures of the explosion of an atomic bomb with different coloring.

How Literature Predicted and Portrayed the Atom Bomb

On Pierrepoint B. Noyes, H.G. Wells, and the “Superweapons” of early science-fiction.
A painting of George Washington on horseback reviewing the Western Army at Fort Cumberland.
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Merry, Manly Militias

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

The Political Force Behind Zionism

A new book traces the rise of the Israel lobby and the challenges it has faced as global criticism of Israel has intensified.
William McKinley making a campaign speech in 1896.

Why Trump Admires President McKinley, the Original ‘Tariff Man’

President Donald Trump says McKinley made the United States prosperous through tariffs. Historians say that’s an incomplete understanding of the 25th president.
A National Guard stands near a burning building during the Los Angeles uprising of 1992.
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How Disaster Provides Cover for Targeting Immigrants

Efforts to target immigrants amid the 1992 L.A. Uprising point to what deportations might look like under Trump 2.0.
A crib drawn with Stars and Stripes symbolism.

Birthright Citizenship Is a Sacred Guarantee

The attack on it is a violation of the nation’s post–Civil War rebirth.
A drawing of a man riding a train and laying down train tracks in front of him.

The Insidious Charms of the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic

You’re passionate. Purpose-driven. Dreaming big, working hard, making it happen. And now they’ve got you where they want you.
Ben Davis Jr. leaving courthouse, surrounded by crowd carrying signs bearing various slogans.

In 1930s NYC, Proportional Representation Boosted the Left

NYC history suggests that the Left might profitably revive proportional representation as a tool to build its electoral strength.

How the U.S. Gamed the Law of the Sea

It made itself bigger.
President John F. Kennedy writing at desk in the Oval Office.

Kennedy Family Values

Why is America’s near-mythic dynasty so nasty up close?

The Naval Scientist Who Wanted To Know How Football Players Would Survive Nuclear War

It wouldn’t take much, the fan explained, just some radioactive material inside the players, who would then undergo a physical examination.
President Trump at desk in Oval Office signing executive orders.

President Trump Promises to Make Government Efficient

He’ll run into the same roadblocks as Presidents Taft, Roosevelt, Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Carter, Reagan, Clinton and Bush, among others.
Police officer, yellow tape, and abandoned bikes and lawnchairs after the Highland Park shooting.
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How Gun Violence and the Supreme Court Have Shaped Second Amendment Rights

Supreme Court rulings on gun laws highlight the struggle to balance individual rights and public safety.
Pedestrians, buggies, and a streetcar in a Los Angeles intersection in 1910.

LA’s Traffic Ordinance Went Into Effect 100 Years Ago. It Changed Streets Across America.

The Ordinance, which prioritized cars on the city’s roadways, quickly became the template for the country.

Farmer George

The connections between the first president’s commitment to agricultural innovation and his evolving attitudes toward his enslaved laborers at Mount Vernon.
John Tower; Pete Hegseth.

In 1989, Senators Faced a Pete Hegseth Situation Very Differently

I covered the 1989 fight over George H.W. Bush's secretary of defense nominee. It feels awfully familiar.
Trump's airplane in Greenland.
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Why Trump Wants Greenland—And Why He Probably Won't Get It

He's not the first to set his sights on the island.
Ronald Reagan

Revisiting the Panama Canal Debate of 1978

The uproar over Trump’s remarks about the Canal recalls a lively debate from the late 1970s.
Jesus blessing two men who are kneeling in prayer.

Lusting for Zion

A new book questions what we think we know about heterosexuality and Latter-day Saints, or Mormons.
Donald Trump half-obscured by the American flag.

Emperor Trump’s New Map

The president who built his fan base on isolationism is pivoting to a kind of imperialism that the U.S. hasn’t seen in decades.
Chinese workers standing in the streets.

The Long Shadow of the Chinese Exclusion Act

The true cost of the immigration policy can be measured in the generations of Chinese Americans who were never born.
Drawings of Sadie James and Charles Page over a map of Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The True Story of Tulsa’s Forgotten Antihero, Sadie James

And a walk downtown in search of her saloon, the Bucket of Blood.
Federal employees wait for treatment at a public health dispensary.

Trump Isn’t the First to Upend the Federal Workforce Because of Race

President Woodrow Wilson presided over the segregation of government workers, putting Black people behind screens and in cages in 1913.
David Dobson with scientific equipment.

Nuclear Proliferation and the “Nth Country Experiment”

A mid-1960s “do-it-yourself” project produced “credible nuclear weapon” design from open sources.
A collage of the United States Constitution, seal, and a hand holding two small American flags.

The Attack on Birthright Citizenship Is a Big Test for the Constitution

Does the text mean what it plainly says?
Painting from 1784 of Romans doing a straight-armed salute.

The Revisionist History of the Nazi Salute

Elon Musk’s defenders were quick to claim that his hand motion was actually an ancient “Roman salute” — but that gesture never existed.
Workers with shovels constructing the Panama Canal.
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Trump’s Talk of the Panama Canal Taps Into Old Myths About U.S. Power

By threatening to reclaim the Panama Canal, Trump is evoking false stories about U.S. beneficence.
Women adjusting their makeup and hair in a women's restroom in the 1940s.

In the Ladies’ Loo

Gender-segregated bathrooms tell a story about who is and who is not welcome in public life.

Opus Dei, Embezzlement, and Human Trafficking

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

How the First ‘Madam Secretary’ Fought to Save Jewish Refugees Fleeing From Nazi Germany

Frances Perkins’ challenged the United States’ restrictive immigration policies as FDR’s Secretary of Labor.
Brawny arm tattooed with Capitol building and fighter jets.

The Return of American Exuberance

Trump's foreign policy is not as unprecedented as it seems.
Perle Mesta laughing at a dinner party.

Washington’s Hostess with the Mostes’

Dinner parties in the capital have long been a path to power, but Perle Mesta had her eye on a different prize.
Groyper figurehead Nick Fuentes speaks at a "Stop the Steal" rally in Georgia in 2020.

The Groypers’ Battle Within the GOP

The “Groypers,” the furthest-right fringe of Trump’s coalition, want the party to adopt an overtly white nationalist agenda.
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