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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.
by Aaron Bady via Boston Review on October 30, 2024
Chart of Black Population by state in 1860.

Black Population by State, 1790–2019

A Flourish data visualisation by Bill Black.
by Bill Black via Flourish on July 29, 2021
Photo collage of different families interspersed with population charts, census data books, and maps

The Story of Families, Wrested From Big Data

Records tell the story of the decline of the patriarchy, marrying young, and pandemic fallout. Digitizing the data could reveal even richer tales.
by Eryn Brown, Steven Ruggles via Knowable Magazine on July 15, 2021
Chart of the names given to generations at different times.

Your Generational Identity Is a Lie

You are not Gen X. You are not a Millennial. Unless you are a Baby Boomer, you are nothing.
by Philip Bump via Washington Post on April 1, 2015

What's Old is New: How Orange County's Conservative Past Created its Demographics Today

As immigration flows changed, Orange County's demographics changed and so did its political leanings.
by Ryan Reft via KCET on January 18, 2013
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.
by James Marten via UNC Press Blog on June 16, 2025
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.
by Norbert Michel, Jerome Famularo via Cato Institute on June 12, 2025
National Public Housing Museum

At the National Public Housing Museum, an Embattled Idea Finds a Home

Chicago’s latest museum looks to change the narrative around the federally supported housing projects that US cities turned their backs on decades ago.
by Zach Mortice via CityLab on April 25, 2025
Working-class Irish family.

What Made the Irish Famine So Deadly

The Great Hunger was a modern event, shaped by the belief that the poor are the authors of their own misery and that the market must be obeyed at all costs.
by Fintan O’Toole via The New Yorker on March 10, 2025
Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu in the White House.

Trump’s Gaza Plan May Mark the End of the Postwar Order

Although the West has long tolerated forced expulsions when convenient, its postwar framework at least nominally rejected them. Now the US is endorsing it.
by Dirk Moses via Jacobin on February 16, 2025
A moving truck on cinder blocks.

How Progressives Froze the American Dream

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.
by Yoni Appelbaum via The Atlantic on February 10, 2025

How America Invented the Red State

According to conventional wisdom, the last quarter century of elections has proved that most of the country leans conservative. It all started with a map.
by Tarence Ray via The Nation on December 17, 2024
A sign in support of Donald Trump in front of an Ohio junkyard in 2024.
partner

The 2024 Election Marked the Inversion of the Electoral Map

Instead of trying to recapture working class votes, Democrats should be focused on building the kind of economy they need to expand the political map.
by Stephanie Ternullo via Made By History on December 16, 2024
A drawing of two people speaking with a third person's head listening between them.

Diverging Majority

Demography has not managed to be destiny in the past half-century—but predictions of a millenarian shift have not lost their appeal.
by Rick Perlstein, Geraldo Cadava via The Baffler on September 3, 2024
A man tacks applications to Princeton University on a bulletin board
partner

The Rise of the College Application Essay

The essay component of American college applications has a long history, but its purpose has changed over time.
by Sarah Stoller via Made By History on July 11, 2024
National Bureau of Economic Research logo.

Her Property Transactions: White Women and the Frequency of Female Ownership in the Antebellum Era

White women were especially likely to be owners involved in transactions with enslaved women, where they were listed as owners in nearly 40% of transactions.
by Benton Wishart, Trevor D. Logan via National Bureau Of Economic Research on May 31, 2024
graph of historic immigration data

How America Tried and Failed to Stay White

100 years ago the U.S. tried to limit immigration to White Europeans. Instead, diversity triumphed.
by Eduardo Porter, Youyou Zhou via Washington Post on May 15, 2024
A protest in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray.

The Problem with Baltimore

The impact of the city's history with slavery.
by Anthony Smooth via Black Perspectives on March 22, 2024
Collage of George Romney giving a speech, the Baileys, their house, and riot police.

In 1967, a Black Man and a White Woman Bought a Home. American Politics Would Never Be the Same.

What happened to the Bailey family in the Detroit suburb of Warren became a flashpoint in the national battle over integration.
by Zack Stanton via Politico Magazine on December 22, 2023
DC Map

Fifty Years Of Home Rule In Washington, DC

After Congress robbed Washingtonians of local and federal representation, decades of activism -- slowed by racist opposition -- finally succeeded in 1973.
via The Metropole on December 20, 2023
Two women working for the 1940 census.

'Are You Still Living?'

Who is counted by the census, how, and for what purpose, has changed a lot since 1790.
by Kasia Boddy via London Review of Books on October 19, 2023
A man walking down an unpaved street in an impoverished Appalachian neighborhood.

What the Best Places in America Have in Common

The Index of Deep Disadvantage reflects a more holistic view of how we can define "poverty."
by H. Luke Shaefer, Timothy J. Nelson, Kathryn J. Edin via The Atlantic on August 5, 2023
Young demonstrators protesting with signs that say "Our Generation Our Choice."

Is It Useful to Analyze Politics in Terms of Generations?

Keir Milburn argues that generational analysis can explain class operation while Adolph Reed Jr. writes that it obscures historically specific social relations.
by Adolph Reed Jr., Keir Milburn via The Nation on July 14, 2023
A Ku Klux Klan march, late 1800s to early 1900s.

Tracing the Legacy of Southern White Migration

Unlike the Southern whites who moved en masse during the 20th century, these early migrants often had direct, personal ties to the institution of slavery.
by Samuel Bazzi, Andreas Ferrara, Martin Fiszbein, Thomas Pearson, Patrick A. Testa via Broadstreet on July 1, 2023
Map showing density of Southern-born whites living outside the south in 1900.

The Confederate Diaspora

A summary of how white migration out of the postbellum South entrenched Confederate culture across the U.S. during postwar reconciliation.
by Samuel Bazzi, Andreas Ferrara, Martin Fiszbein, Thomas Pearson, Patrick A. Testa via National Bureau Of Economic Research on June 21, 2023
Black family of a mother and six kids stting outside a cabin.

Segregation Doubled the Odds of Some Black Children Dying In U.S. Cities 100 Years Ago

Research shows structural racism in 1900s U.S. society harmed Black health in ways still being felt today.
by Rodrigo Pérez Ortega via Science on June 13, 2023
Painting of a young boy working as an apprentice, wearing an apron

How Long Did the School Year Last in Early America?

Even throwing off of a colonial power, representative institutions, Protestantism, and local autonomy in school decisions did not produce an egalitarian system.
by Carole Shammas via Cambridge Core Blog on June 12, 2023
Detail of faces on a family tree.

The Pocahontas Exception: America’s Ancestor Obsession

The ‘methods and collections’ of genealogists are political because they have a great deal in common with genealogy as a way of doing history.
by Thomas W. Laqueur via London Review of Books on March 30, 2023
Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right

‘Birchers,’ a Well-Told, Familiar Entry in the ‘How We Got to Trump’ Genre

In his history of the John Birch Society, Matthew Dallek says Republicans allowed the extreme fringe to “eventually cannibalize the entire party.”
by Sam Adler-Bell via Washington Post on March 22, 2023
Visualization showing the largest cities in the US, from the Statistical Atlas of the Eleventh Census, 1790-1890

Growing New England's Cities

What can a visualization of population growth in cities and towns in the Northeast tell us about different moments in the region's economic geography?
by Garrett Dash Nelson via Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center on March 17, 2023
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