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Harry Smith pointing finger upward

Outsider’s Outsider

At once famous and obscure, marginal and central, Harry Smith anticipated and even invented several important elements of Sixties counterculture.
Patti Davis sits for a portrait with her pug, Lily, at her home.

For Years, the Reagans' Daughter Regretted Some Things She Wrote. Now She's at Peace.

Patti Davis has spent a lifetime chronicling her life with parents Ronald and Nancy Reagan. In a new book, 'Dear Mom and Dad,' she reckons with them as people.
A sign left behind by Trump supporters at a rally outside the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, September 27, 2023.

American Fascism

On how Europe’s interwar period informs the present.
Two American soldiers in UCP uniforms with an Iraqi man in the background.

Universal Failure

Universal Camouflage Pattern became a symbol of an unpopular war. Today, it’s being reappraised by those too young to remember the invasion of Iraq.
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The Eternal Inflation of the Spotless Grade

For more than 50 years, we've been worrying about "grade inflation" at elite American universities. It's time to move on.
Political cartoon of Trump praying at the foot of a Jefferson Davis statue.

What Happened When the U.S. Failed to Prosecute an Insurrectionist Ex-President

After the Civil War, Jefferson Davis, was to be tried for treason. Does the debacle hold lessons for the trials awaiting Donald Trump?
Photographer shooting Henry Kissinger on Air Force One.

Notes From the Front

Henry Kissinger’s Vietnam diary shows that he knew the war was lost a decade before it ended.
Henry Kissinger

Henry Kissinger, War Criminal Beloved by America's Ruling Class, Finally Dies

In a demonstration of why he was able to kill so many people and get away with it, the day of his passage will be a solemn one in Congress and newsrooms.
The cult-like aesthetic of technocracy, 1942.

Margaret Mead, Technocracy, and the Origins of AI's Ideological Divide

The anthropologist helped popularize both techno-optimism and the concept of existential risk.
US Marines marching in Da Nang, Vietnam, 1965.

How Israel Is Borrowing From the US Playbook in Vietnam

Justifying civilian casualties has a long history.

The Men Who Started the War

John Brown and the Secret Six—the abolitionists who funded the raid on Harpers Ferry—confronted a question as old as America: When is violence justified?
A Mexican family stands next to the border wall between Mexico and the United States, in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico on May 23, 2017.
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America’s Border Wall Is Bipartisan

Biden continues a tradition of building fences at the US-Mexico border that long precedes Donald Trump.
Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Voices from the Wilderness

The actual history of New Deal policies provides little evidence that it was a rollicking success.
Closed fist with faces of Judith Shklar, Hannah Arendt, Isaiah Berlin, and Lionel Trilling

Cold War Liberalism Is Still With Us. Is That a Good Thing?

A scholarly roundtable on Samuel Moyn's new book.
Richard Nixon, 1968.

Richard Nixon’s Last Crusade

America’s 37th president tried to save America’s Russia policy in the 1990s.
Shelby Foote with a drawing of a Civil War battle superimposed over him.

The South’s Jewish Proust

Shelby Foote, failed novelist and closeted member of the Tribe, turned the Civil War into a masterpiece of American literature.
Small homesteading cabin in the desert.

“Jackrabbiting” Away from Urban Spaces

Seeking rural solitude, urban Southern Californians ventured into the Mojave Desert, armed with pickaxes and dreams but facing harsh landscapes and red tape.
Oppenheimer movie poster.

The Race to Make Hollywood’s First Atomic Bomb Movie

Before Christopher Nolan’s "Oppenheimer," the world nearly got Ayn Rand’s "Tribute to Free Enterprise."
The iconic white lettered Hollywood sign

The Hidden History of the Hollywood Sign

“The sign has become a worldwide symbol of the Hollywood of the imagination, and it allows anyone who sees it to fill it with whatever meaning they want.”
A crowd of men attending a Plattsburgh Camp.

Going to Summer Camp in 1913 Meant Practicing for World War I

How the Plattsburg camps tried (and failed) to raise a volunteer army ahead of World War I.
President Theodore Roosevelt raising his hat to wave.

The Curse of Bigness

Until more Americans know what happened in periods such as the Gilded Age, they can’t protect themselves from those who abuse history to advance poor policy.
Basketball players resting on court

Game Changer

On the mismatched sporting advice of Clair Bee and John R. Tunis.
Illustration of the Battle of Little Big Horn.

The True History of 'Custer's Last Stand'

We're talking about the Battle of Little Bighorn all wrong.
Daniel Ellsberg at podium with group in front of U.S. Court House

Daniel Ellsberg Leaked His Vietnam Secrets To Senators First. They Balked.

Before going to the press, Ellsberg spent a year and a half quietly leaking the Pentagon Papers to leading antiwar lawmakers. They all declined to speak out.
Illustration of Freud emerging from Woodrow Wilson's head.

Should We Psychoanalyze Our Presidents?

Sigmund Freud once applied his Oedipal theory to the leader of the free world.
Illustration of a person reading, sitting on a giant stack of books.

Is Writing History Like Solving a Mystery?

Why historians like to think of themselves as detectives.
A collage shows a white hand segregating Black Americans.

No Breakthrough in Sight

More than fifty years after the Fair Housing Act, inequality and segregation persists. What went wrong?
Martin Luther King Jr. with other activists and children.

Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Perilous Power of Respectability

We revere the man and revile the strategy, but King knew what he was doing.
From left to right portraits of Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Donald Trump.
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The 40-Year Path that Left the GOP Unable to Balance the Budget

First, the GOP became the party of tax cuts and now it won't touch entitlements — which makes a balanced budget nearly impossible.
Soldiers of the 9th Infantry Division disembark from a helicopter during the Division's withdrawal from Vietnam.

The Many Ends of the Vietnam War

When do wars end, and who gets to decide? These deceptively simple questions are actually quite difficult to answer.

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