Excerpts

Curated stories from around the web.
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Workers adjust a metal sheet on a Titan missile assembly line.

The Permanent War Economy Doesn’t Benefit Workers

Advocates of “military Keynesianism” present it as a boon for the working class. In reality, it diverts resources away from social provision.

Remembering One of America’s First Modern School Shootings, 50 Years Later

A teacher tells the story of 1974’s Olean, New York High School murders.
William Sentner address a crowd of union workers at a small arms plant

The Radical Midwest of Bill Sentner

St Louis organizer Bill Sentner led some of the most successful labor battles in Midwestern history by uniting workers across race and gender lines.
Lee Pattie Registrar's Report

Trouble with the Brothers: Booze, Divorce, and Madness in the American West

The past really is a foreign country, as historian Jonathan Ablard finds when piecing together the turbulent history of his ancestors in the West and Midwest.
Phineas Gage.

How the ‘Myth of Phineas Gage’ Affects Brain Injury Survivors

Why does the diagnosis of Gage social ‘disinhibition’ lean so heavily on flimsy documentation about Gage, while overlooking the case of Eadweard Muybridge?
Frank Hallam, "En Masse Sunners Seen from Pier 45, 4/25/1982" (1982/2012) (collection of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, Gift of the artist)

When NYC’s Piers Were a Sanctuary for Gay Gathering 

In the 1960s, amid the shipping industry's decline, the empty piers became a site for cruising and creativity for gay men in particular.
A man pushes a bicycle as he walks amid rubble in the devastated area around Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital, April 3, 2024. (AFP via Getty Images)

Gaza and the Undoing of Zionism

A historian reviews new books by Peter Beinart, Avi Shlaim and Pankaj Mishra on the project that animates Israel’s violence.
Highways & Horizons, front and back covers of brochure for the General Motors pavilion at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. [Prelinger Library]

Highways and Horizons

The Interstate Highway System created a national polity defined by circulation. To rethink the Interstates is to rethink the United States.
Martin Luther King Jr stands behind a podium.

5 Lessons From the Real Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

This Juneteenth we need to discard the caricatures of King that we so often see and learn from what he actually did and believed.
Conservative protesters hold signs and flags at a Tea Party protest.

Lone Star Futures

Texas might have been a place to start a conversation about widening the scope of civil liberties, but it has also been a place where those liberties end.
Statue of Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln Wasn't Born an Abolitionist, He Became One

We live in polarized times when freedom is threatened but this Juneteenth we should remind ourselves that we have overcome far worse.
Collage of James Madison writing, Justice Scalia speaking, White House and Constitution.

Putting the "Executive" in “Unitary Executive”

We cannot divorce the independence of the executive branch from its substance.
A hand holds a US flag and a pride flag in front of the Supreme Court building in a crowd celebrating the Obergefell v. Hodges decision.
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How the Supreme Court Ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges Legalized Same-Sex Marriage

When Jim Obergefell and his partner John Arthur decided to marry after more than 20 years together, their home state refused to recognize same-sex marriages.
Protestors confronting Army military police.

When the Military Comes to American Soil

Domestic deployments have generally been quite restrained. Can they still be?

The Heritage of Dylann Roof

Ten years after the Charleston massacre, reverence for the Confederacy that Roof idolized is going strong.
William Buckley stands behind a podium, surrounded by a throng of people, and waves.

The Real Bill Buckley

Even some liberals toasted William F. Buckley Jr. as a patrician gentleman. A long-awaited new biography corrects that record.
The committee assigned to draft the Declaration of Independence examines the document.

The Declaration of Independence Mourns for Something People Lost in 1776 − and Now, Too

The nation’s founding document, the Declaration of Independence, depicts a wounded, fearful society, teetering on the brink of disaster. Sound familiar?
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration headquarters.
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Trump May be Repeating Reagan's Deep Sea Mining Mistake

Undermining international oceans governance could damage American interests.
Toni Morrison holding a manuscript.

She Was the Greatest Author of Her Generation. She Should Be Remembered for More Than Her Writing.

Toni Morrison was an editor for 12 years, even as she wrote her own masterpieces. I spoke to her authors about being edited by an icon.
Strings descend from the talons of an eagle's foot and hold up a shipping container.

Why Donald Trump Is Obsessed with William McKinley

McKinley led a country defined by tariffs and colonial wars. Trump is drawn to his legacy—and determined to bring the liberal international order to an end.
The letters Q and A having a conversation.

The History of Advice Columns Is a History of Eavesdropping and Judging

How an Ovid-quoting London broadsheet from the late seventeenth century spawned “Dear Abby,” Dan Savage, and Reddit’s Am I the Asshole.
Lithograph depicting General Washington leading his troops in battle against British troops.

Why George Washington Integrated the Army

The commander-in-chief initially barred black soldiers from joining the ranks, but he came to understand the value—both moral and strategic—of a diverse force.
An illustration of blurry Korean people in the ruins of a city after a nuclear bombing.

The Atomic Bombs’ Forgotten Korean Victims

Survivors of the nuclear blasts in Hiroshima and Nagasaki are still fighting for recognition.
Graphic of a nickel displays the words "nullification," "compact," and "sever" on Jefferson's head.

Thomas Jefferson Would Like A Word With You

Thomas Jefferson's limited government ideal quickly conflicted with the U.S. Constitution and the dominant Federalist Party, prompting a radical proposal.
Civil War soldiers on the cover of James Marten's book "The Sixth Wisconsin"

Ancestry.com and the Long Civil War

The sad remnants of a soldier’s life revealed through probate and Ancestry offer a moving glimpse into the afterlife of Civil War service.

Eco-Terrorists Aren't What They Used to Be

Fifty years on, "The Monkey Wrench Gang" remains a problematic text for environmental activists, who are inclined to endorse its violent tendencies.
A woman peering into the cave of Sarah Bishop c. 1900.

The Curious History of New England’s Hermit Tourism

From Revolutionary War-era recluses to 1920s roadside attractions, meet the solitary figures who turned isolation into a destination.
Individuals salute and hold their hand over their hearts as they watch a parade. A portrait of George Washington hangs in front.

Trump’s Un-American Parade

What looks like an excess of strength may really be a deficit of liberty.
Affordable housing development under construction in New York City
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The History of the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit

Expanding the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit could make a successful program even better—and address a major crisis.
Image of where the rust belt is located on a US map

Economic Mobility, Not Manufacturing Decline, Is the Real Rust Belt Story

A look at popular interpretations and actual labor fluctuations in the Rust Belt over time.
Advertisement highlighting recipes to make with Seabrook frozen vegetables.

Decline and Fall of the Spinach Kings: On the Wilting of a Family Dynasty

A history of wealth, enterprise, and family dysfunction.
A row of California National Guardsmen stand atop a top step in riot gear.

Trump’s Deportation Frenzy Echoes the Fugitive Slave Hunts of the 1850s

Trump's crackdown on immigrants bears alarming parallels to the fugitive slave obsessions of the pre-Civil War South.
Soldiers listen as President Donald Trump speaks at Fort Bragg on June 10, 2025, in North Carolina. | Alex Brandon/AP

Trump Reverses Army Base Names in Latest DEI Purge

The announcement comes just four days before the Army’s multimillion dollar parade in Washington.
Karl Marx's face in the American flag

The Marxists Are Coming

Calls to defund the Marxist left and similar mobilizations against rumors of a new red dawn are nothing new.

The Revolutionary Idea That Remade the New World

Birthright citizenship is distinctly American—but not in the way Trump thinks.
Illustration equating Israel's “Who is a Jew?” policy with the Nazi selection process.

Jew? Not a Jew?

The untold story of how American Jewry and the Jewish state almost resolved the question of who is a Jew.
Illustration by Adrià Fruitós.

Greater America Has Been Exporting Disunion for Decades

So why are we still surprised when the tide of blood reaches our own shores?
Portrait of Pope Leo XIII by Franz von Lenbach, 1886.

The Heresy of Americanism

Jack Hanson on the new pope and his namesake.
Trump poster hanging on a federal building, scowling at people below.

If Trump Could Make John Wayne the Head of Homeland Security, He Would

Trump mixes restoration with revolution—his reactionary modernism wooed Silicon Valley, but for everyone else, it signals looming repression.
Irving Thalberg and his wife, with Louis Mayer.

The Wizard Behind Hollywood’s Golden Age

How Irving Thalberg helped turn M-G-M into the world’s most famous movie studio—and gave the film business a new sense of artistry and scale.
Militarized National Guard confronts peaceful protesters in Los Angeles, 2025.

What History Tells Us to Expect From Trump’s Escalation in Los Angeles Protests

Since the 1960s, studies have shown that heavy-handed policing and militarized responses tend to make protests more volatile — not less.
A collage of men with different hairstyles.

Bad Curls, Bad Character

The charged meaning of hair in 19th-century America.
Visitors pose atop Arch Rock, a geological formation on Mackinac Island.

How America’s Second National Park Lost Its Federal Status—and Gained a New Life as a State Park

Much of Mackinac Island was designated as a national park, but was too expensive for the government to maintain, so it was transferred to the State of Michigan.
White South Africans who support Donald Trump in front of the U.S. Embassy in Pretoria, 2025.
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The History of White Refugee Narratives

The Trump Administration's reasons for resettling Afrikaners echo early U.S. debates about Haiti's independence.
Gertrude Berg.

The Forgotten Inventor of the Sitcom

Gertrude Berg’s “The Goldbergs” was a bold, beloved portrait of a Jewish family. Then the blacklist obliterated her legacy.
Jewish activists hold Passover Seder outside ICE headquarters in New York City to demand an end to Israel's war on Gaza.

The Past, Present, and Future of Left Jewish Identity

Jewish-led Palestine solidarity demonstrations are part of a long history of Jewish identity being bound up in leftist politics.
Political cartoon depicts Roosevelt steering a ship out of a depression while his detractors are rained on.

Welcoming Their Hatred

As Elon Musk and Donald Trump engaged in a campaign of mutually-assured destruction, social media saw record new levels of schadenfreude.
View of a cast member sitting nude on scaffolding during a performance.

The Sixties Come Back to Life in “Everything Is Now”

J. Hoberman’s teeming history of New York’s avant-garde scene is a fascinating trove of research and a thrilling clamor of voices.
The logo for Canada Lumber.

French Canadians in the New England Woods

French Canadians held a distinct position in an American labor landscape in which experts viewed different “races” as being suited to different kinds of work.
Abstract painting depicts faces staring at each other from either end of the canvas.

Bridging the Gap

A new book portrays five American historians who published popular books that sacrificed neither intellectual depth nor political bite.
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