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Walt Rostow testifying in the U.S. Senate in Washington, D.C., February 1962.

The Real Washington Consensus

Modernization theory and the delusions of American strategy.
by Charles King via Foreign Affairs on October 24, 2023
A line of people holding each others' shoulders as they walk with their eyes closed on a sidewalk in front of a building.

Ukraine Yesterday & Tomorrow

Ukraine didn’t become an epicenter of world history all of a sudden; it became an epicenter again.
by Oksana Forostyna via European Review Of Books on June 13, 2022
Portrait of Pope Leo XIII by Franz von Lenbach, 1886.

The Heresy of Americanism

Jack Hanson on the new pope and his namesake.
by Jack Hanson via The Drift on June 10, 2025
An illustration depicts Dorothy holding her dog Toto while interacting with an Ozian.

L. Frank Baum’s Literary Vision of an American Century: "The Wizard of Oz" at 125 Years

On grifters, the Chicago World Fair, and Oz as symbol of a modern USA.
by Ed Simon via Literary Hub on May 16, 2025
Lin Taiyi takes dictation from her father, Dr. Lin Yutang, on a typewriter he invented.

Lost and Found: The Unexpected Journey of the MingKwai Typewriter

Its ingenious design inspired generations of language-processing technology, but only one prototype was made and had long been assumed lost.
by Yangyang Chen via Made In China Journal on May 2, 2025
Volunteers at a camp for internally displaced people in Bahir Dar, Ethiopia, carry wheat flour donated by USAID in 2021.

USAID’s History Shows Decades of Good Work on Behalf of America’s Global Interests

USAID started in the 1960s as a way to offset the spread of communism. Since then, it has had various other soft-power benefits for the US.
by Christian Ruth via The Conversation on March 5, 2025
William McKinley

Trump Is Right About McKinley

“The most underrated president” was a model of successful governance in a world in flux.
by Sean Durns via The American Conservative on August 1, 2024
Sinclair Lewis.

How to Study the “Village Virus”

Sinclair Lewis and the small-town science of yearning.
by Vincent L. Femia via The Metropole on April 3, 2024
Montack Point lighthouse.

Illuminating the Republic: Maritime Safety and the Federalist Vision of Empire

Federal lighthouses symbolized a vigorous young nation barreling toward maturity.
by Shawn David McGhee via Journal of the American Revolution on January 18, 2024
The New York Times headquarters in Manhattan.

The ‘Times’ Is A-Changing

A new history of the ‘New York Times.’
by Paul Moses via Commonweal on January 7, 2024
The Jewish Catalog

When Judaism Went à la Carte

On the 50th anniversary of "The Jewish Catalog."
by Jane Eisner via The Atlantic on July 28, 2023
The cover of the United Nations FAO-Unesco Soil Map of the World, 1974.

The Earth for Man

Redistributing land was once central to global development efforts—and it should be today.
by Jo Guldi via Boston Review on May 3, 2023
Image from book cover of "Petroleum and Progress in Iran."

There Will Be War

U.S.-Iranian relations, the interrelationship between Iranian development and the global oil market, and the future of economic warfare.
by Michael Brenes, Gregory Brew via Warfare And Welfare on February 1, 2023
Little girl preparing for a polio vaccine.

We Didn't Vanquish Polio. What Does That Mean for Covid-19?

The world is still reeling from the pandemic, but another scourge we thought we’d eliminated has reemerged.
by Patrick Cockburn via The Nation on September 19, 2022
A family tree relating Aaron Sachs' book "Up From the Depths" with Lewis Mumford and Herman Melville.

Why Reading History for Its “Lessons” Misses the Point

On Lewis Mumford, Herman Melville, and the gentle art of looking back in time.
by Daniel Immerwahr via Slate on June 6, 2022
Hans Frank being questioned at the Nuremberg trials, flanked by guards.

What is Left of History?

Joan Scott’s "On the Judgment of History" asks us to imagine the past without the idea of progress. But what gets left out in the process?
by David A. Bell via The Nation on May 2, 2022
Neil Young, on left, and UFC announcer and podcaster Joe Rogan.
partner

What The Neil Young-Joe Rogan Dust-Up Tells Us About The Music Industry

The music industry is thriving — but it’s not always trickling down to artists.
by Sam Backer via Made By History on February 6, 2022
Photograph of Robert Moses on a background collage of a blueprint and a photo of passengers waiting in Penn Station.

Robert Moses Helped Ruin Penn Station. He'd Have Made it Easier to Fix, Too.

Preservationists like Jane Jacobs are urbanist heroes. But their rules can stifle.
by Samuel Goldman via The Week on December 10, 2021
A colorful bird and landscape sketched within the shape of a man's head.

Emerson Didn’t Practice the Self-Reliance He Preached

How Transcendentalism, the American philosophy that championed the individual, caught on in tight-knit Concord, Massachusetts.
by Mark Greif via The Atlantic on November 9, 2021

Before Interstates, America Got Around on Interurbans

The fate of electrified “rural trolleys” at the beginning of 20th century could offer lessons for today’s train boosters.
by Vince Guerrieri via CityLab on October 6, 2021
Marine handing water to evacuees

The End Of Nation-Building

History offers a guide for why the American project in Afghanistan went wrong — and for the future of foreign engagement in the country.
by Timothy Nunan via Noema on August 24, 2021
Benito Mussolini.

The Americans Who Embraced Mussolini

As we confront rightwing extremism in our own time, the history of American fascist sympathy reveals a legacy worth reckoning with.
by Justin H. Vassallo via Boston Review on February 1, 2021

Indian Removal

One of the world's first mass deportations, bureaucratically managed and large-scale, took place on American soil.
by Claudio Saunt via Aeon on April 23, 2020
Farmers haying.

Remembering the ‘Spooky Wisdom’ of Our Agrarian Past

For millennia, humans have followed specific patterns passed down by their forbears without always knowing why.
by Gracy Olmstead via The American Conservative on April 23, 2018

This Is Helen Keller’s 1932 'Modern Woman'

In 1932, Hellen Keller offered some advice for the “perplexed businessman.”
by Caitlin Cadieux via The Atlantic on February 27, 2018
Prisoners hoeing a field at Cummins Prison Farm in Arkansas, 1972.

Prison Plantations

One man’s archive of a vanished culture.
by Maurice Chammah via The Marshall Project on May 1, 2015
1907 illustration depicting a fireman rescuing a woman from the roof of a house

The History of the Ordinary

An early 20th-century scrapbook put together by Company 62 of the New York City Fire Department.
by Laura Bang, Ruth Martin via The Public Domain Review on June 7, 2014
Coastal telegraph semaphore tower, 1799.

The Secret Signal

The semaphore towers of the Hudson.
by John Bulmer via Restoration Obscura on May 31, 2025
Elon Musk and his son board Air Force One.

How William Howard Taft’s Approach to Efficiency Differed from Elon Musk’s

This isn’t the first effort by a president’s appointee to streamline government.
by Laura Ellyn Smith via The Conversation on May 9, 2025
An illustration of a government building holding up an American home with a stylized hand.

The Good Society Department

Once upon a time, there was a federal government department that helped design and distribute tools for living the good life. What happened to that vision?
by John Last via Noema on April 3, 2025
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