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On Monuments and Public Lands

Any critical take on public monuments today must confront the reality that public lands are themselves colonized lands.
by Whitney Martinko via Hindsights on September 15, 2017

Fannie Quigley, the Alaska Gold Rush's All-in-One Miner, Hunter, Brewer, and Cook

She used mine shafts as a beer fridge and shot bears to get lard for pie crusts.
by Tessa Hulls via Atlas Obscura on August 21, 2017

An Independence Day Alternative

How "enlightened" leaders of the early US ignored an Independence Day speech and set in motion indigenous peoples' brutalization.
by Nicholas Guyatt via Jacobin on July 4, 2017
Settlement of Israelis in the West Bank.

How American Jews Became Israeli Settlers

Historian Sara Yael Hirschhorn explains what has driven some American Jews to the most contentious real estate on earth.
by Michael Schulson, Sara Yael Hirschhorn via Arc: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera on May 30, 2017
Benjamin West's replica of his painting "Reception of the American Loyalists by Great Britain in the Year 1783."
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The Loyal Opposition

On the Loyalists who fled during the Revolutionary War – like Jacob Bailey, who saw freedom from tyranny with the British in Nova Scotia.
via BackStory on November 11, 2016

I Retraced the Gold Rush Trail to Find the American Dream

A disenchanted San Franciscan rides west with a motley crew of pioneers.
by Alexis Coe via The New Republic on March 14, 2016
Photograph of Chief Iron Tail.

American Indians, Playing Themselves

As Buffalo Bill's performers, they were walking stereotypes. But a New York photographer showed the humans beneath the headdresses.
by Michelle Delaney via What It Means to Be American on January 27, 2015
A drawing of a hippopotamus with its mouth open wide.

American Hippopotamus

A bracing and eccentric epic of espionage and hippos.
by Jon Mooallem via The Atavist on November 28, 2013
Illustration of J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur writing.

The American Beginning

The dark side of Crèvecoeur's "Letters from an American Farmer."
by Alan Taylor via The New Republic on July 19, 2013
Poster for Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.
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Where the Buffalo Roam

How Buffalo Bill’s Wild West brought scenes from the American West to audiences around the globe.
via BackStory on March 1, 2013
NAACP Legal Defense Fund button against lynching.

“Lynch Law in America”: Annotated

Ida B. Wells-Barnett, whose January 1900 essay exposed the racist reasons given by mobs for their crimes, argued that lynch law was an American shame.
by Ida B. Wells, Liz Tracey via JSTOR Daily on February 21, 2025
<p>Earth rising over the Moon, captured by Lunar Orbiter 1, 1966. Courtesy NASA/<a href="https://www.planetary.org/articles/1238" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The Planetary Society</a></p>

How the Scientists of the 1960s Turned the Moon into a Place

For most of history, the Moon was regarded as a mysterious and powerful object. Then scientists made it into a destination.
by Danny Robb via Aeon on February 13, 2025
A group of indigenous Pacific Islanders forced to work on a sugar plantation, with a white overseer in the background.

How ‘Blackbirders’ Forced Tens of Thousands of Pacific Islanders Into Slavery After the Civil War

The decline of Southern industries paved the way for plantations in Fiji and Australia, where victims of “blackbirding” endured horrific working conditions.
by Shoshi Parks via Smithsonian on December 5, 2024
Oil on canvas (1993–94) depicting the third signing of the Louisiana Treaty in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Trade, Ambition, and the Rise of American Empire

High ideals have always gone together with economic self-interest in the history of the United States.
by Samuel Gregg via Law & Liberty on July 17, 2024
John Dudley Sargent standing next to Edith Sargent.
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Something We Were Never Meant to See

Finding a story in the ways Robert Ray Hamilton, John Dudley Sargent, and Edith Sargent weren’t quite forgotten. 
by Maura Jane Farrelly via HNN on July 9, 2024
Herbert Hoover breaking ground on a model home in front of a crowd.
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Home Sweet Home

On the early years of the real estate industry, and the racist effort to convince white Americans to buy single-family homes.
by Adrienne Brown via HNN on June 20, 2024
Tennessee Valley Authority.

The Dam and the Bomb

On Cormac McCarthy.
by Walker Mimms via n+1 on April 3, 2024
An illustration of a solar eclipse next to a portrait of James Fenimore Cooper.

Solar Eclipses in American History

How the spectacle of the 1806 solar eclipse impacted the national consciousness.
by Matthew Smith via Origins on March 14, 2024
Butter churn by a kitchen fireplace.

Mexican Freedom, American Slavery

Mexico's resistance to the institution of slavery made it a land ripe for African American immigration in the 1800s.
by María Esther Hammack via Black Perspectives on February 12, 2024
Train cars between drifts of snow up to the top of the engine, with onlookers watching

The Monster Blizzard That Turned Kansas Into a Frozen Wasteland

The 1886 blizzard imperiled settlers and left fields of dead cattle in its wake.
by Erin Blakemore via HISTORY on January 17, 2024
John Mitchell's 1755 map of the British colonies in North America.

Defining the Northwestern Limits of the New Republic

John Mitchell's renowned 1755 map was a part of King George III's extensive collection of topographical charts that helped shape American designs on Canada.
by Merv O. Ahrens via Journal of the American Revolution on January 2, 2024
Residents of Icaria, Iowa.

The 19th-Century Novel That Inspired a Communist Utopia on the American Frontier

The Icarians thought they could build a paradise, but their project was marked by failure almost from the start.
by John Last via Smithsonian on November 28, 2023
Texas Mission bell.

A Bell's Journey Through Texas History

For those in later years, the bell’s value lay not in its powerful sound, but in its visual representation.
by Kristin Dutcher Mann via Commonplace on October 3, 2023
Cotton plants.

Understanding Capitalism Through Cotton

Looking at the development of cotton as a global commodity helps us understand how capitalism emerged.
by Sven Beckert, Livia Gershon, Eric Vanhaute via JSTOR Daily on September 25, 2023
Twin brothers Jonathan and Matthew Burgess.

The Black Families Seeking Reparations in California’s Gold Country

Descendants of enslaved people want land seized by the state returned and recognition of the gold rush’s rich, and largely ignored, Black history.
by Michael Scott Moore via The New Yorker on May 17, 2023
Fort William Henry, 1755.
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The Curious History of Ulysses Grant's Great Grandfather

The sacrifice of Captain Noah Grant, during the French and Indian War, may have influenced Ulysses S. Grant, as he decided to rejoin the U.S. Army in 1861.
by John Reeves via HNN on March 19, 2023
Chuquicamata in Chile

The Transformative and Hungry Technologies of Copper Mining

Our own world is built from copper, and so too will future worlds be.
by Robrecht Declercq, Duncan Money via Edge Effects on March 16, 2023
Map of Iowa and a drawing of a factory processing corn.

Searching for the Spirit of the Midwest

Was the nineteenth-century Midwest “the most advanced democratic society that the world had seen”?
by Phil Christman via The New Republic on February 22, 2023
University of Arizona’s “Palm Drive,” 1914.

Dictating the Desert

Plants and settlers take root in a new mythology of Arizona.
by Natalie Koch via Lapham’s Quarterly on February 1, 2023
Illustration of flag against burning city backdrop

Did George Washington Burn New York?

Americans disparaged the British as arsonists. But the rebels fought with fire too.
by Daniel Immerwahr via The Atlantic on January 31, 2023
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