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Drawing of cowboys riding in the desert, guns drawn, while a herd grazes.

The Hell We Raised: How Texas Shaped the Gunfighter Era

Texans left an enduring mark on the gunfighter era. The frontier was a darker place because of it.
by Bryan Burrough via Texas Monthly on May 5, 2025
American soldiers in Vietnam.

If You’ve Watched Ken Burns’ Vietnam Documentary, Do You Need Netflix’s?

I, a historian of the Vietnam War, have watched the Turning Point treatment. I have some notes.
by Scott Laderman via Slate on April 30, 2025
Trump from behind, and the Washington monument.

How Trump Wants to Change History

Late last month, President Donald Trump issued an executive order to restore “truth and sanity to American history.”
by Adam Rowe via Compact on April 24, 2025
A monument of the Minutemen line in Concord, Massachusetts.
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The Dangerous Afterlives of Lexington and Concord

How a myth about farmers taking on the British has fueled more than two centuries of exclusionary nationalism.
by Eran A. Zelnik via HNN on April 15, 2025
General Ulysses S. Grant receiving Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox.
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Appomattox Exposes the Dangers of Myths Replacing History

Historians have revealed that the story Americans long learned about the end of the Civil War was a myth.
by Elizabeth R. Varon via Made By History on April 9, 2025
Harvester on farmland.

America’s Pernicious Rural Myth

An interview with Steven Conn about his new book, “Lies of the Land: Seeing Rural America for What It Is—and Isn’t.”
by Steven Conn, Jacob Bruggeman via Public Books on April 9, 2025
English looking at the word "croatoan" carved in a tree.

The Lingering Mystery of the 'Lost Colony' of Roanoke

From historians to horror writers to white nationalists, attempts to explain the settlement's fate reveal a great deal about our own attitudes.
by Colin Dickey via Atlas Obscura on April 2, 2025
Exhibitions at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington, D.C.

A Truly Patriotic Education Tells Many Stories

Trump’s executive orders can’t define diversity out of history.
by David M. Perry via Foreign Policy on March 31, 2025
Patrick Henry

Did Patrick Henry Really Say ‘Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death’?

The Virginia delegate may have spoken those words on March 23, 1775, but some historians doubt it.
by Gregory S. Schneider via Retropolis on March 21, 2025
Engraving by Samuel de Champlain of himself and his Algonquin allies attacking the Iroquois.

An Expanding Vision of America

Major new books about the peoples who lived in North America for millennia before the arrival of Europeans are reshaping the history of the continent.
by Nicole Eustace via New York Review of Books on March 6, 2025
Ken Burns speaking into microphone (left) and Donald Trump (right).

Ken Burns, Donald Trump, and the Lies that Bring Us Together

It may sound counterintuitive, but Ken Burns’ version of U.S. history actually has quite a bit in common with Trump’s version.
by Akim Reinhardt via 3 Quarks Daily on February 24, 2025
Protestors use the celebrated Hamilton lyric, “Immigrants: We Get the Job Done” to protest the first inauguration of President Donald Trump.

“The Premise of Our Founding”: Immigration and Popular Mythmaking

On the tension between celebratory rhetoric and restrictive policy surrounding immigration.
by Connie Thomas via The Panorama on February 24, 2025
Marianne Faithfull

Marianne Faithfull’s Life Contained Rock Music’s Secret History

The harrowing and heroic life of Marianne Faithfull, cheater of a thousand deaths and music history’s true avenging angel.
by Elise Soutar via Paste on February 4, 2025
Members of the Grand Army of the Republic and the Daughters of Union Veterans gather in Colorado in the 1930s.

Veterans Visit an Idealized West

A gathering of Union veterans in 1883 sheds light on the country's vision of the American West—as a space for reconciliation and a prize won by the war.
by Cecily Nelson Zander via The Civil War Monitor on February 3, 2025
Painting of horsemen in the Caucus mountains.

The Reckless Creation of Whiteness

How an erroneous 18th-century story about the “Caucasian race” led to a centuries of prejudice and misapprehension.
by Erin L. Thompson via The Nation on January 29, 2025
President John F. Kennedy writing at desk in the Oval Office.

Kennedy Family Values

Why is America’s near-mythic dynasty so nasty up close?
by Alan Pell Crawford via The American Conservative on January 25, 2025
Workers with shovels constructing the Panama Canal.
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Trump’s Talk of the Panama Canal Taps Into Old Myths About U.S. Power

By threatening to reclaim the Panama Canal, Trump is evoking false stories about U.S. beneficence.
by Julie Greene via Made By History on January 22, 2025
Ronald and Nancy Reagan smiling and waving at victory celebration.

Honey, I Forgot to Duck

Reagan’s capacity to inhabit and generate legend stemmed from his own impulse to substitute pleasing fictions for inconvenient facts.
by Jackson Lears via London Review of Books on January 15, 2025
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Knight Club

Were the Knights of the Golden Circle responsible for Lincoln’s assassination? No one knows, but far-right secret societies always draw power from speculation.
by Devin Thomas O’Shea via HNN on January 14, 2025
Noam Chomsky illustration by Joe Ciardiello.

The Worlds of Noam Chomsky

If ordinary Americans know one critic of the American Empire, it’s almost certainly Chomsky.
by Daniel Bessner via The Nation on January 13, 2025
Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan in "A Complete Unknown."

Timothée Chalamet Does Dylan

Despite Chalamet’s best efforts, "A Complete Unknown" is a cookie-cutter Bob Dylan biopic for a legendary artist who deserves something more interesting.
by Eileen Jones via Jacobin on January 1, 2025
Donald Trump and RFK Jr. shaking hands.

The Magic Thinking of Kennedy-ism

The hero worship of the family of American royalty has a dark side: a tendency toward conspiracism that fits with the MAGA movement.
by Rick Perlstein via The American Prospect on December 5, 2024
Scene from "Smokey and the Bandit" of Burt Reynolds talking on a CB radio.

"A Long Way to Go and a Short Time to Get There"

In the 1970s, trucker films like "Smokey and the Bandit" celebrated rebellious, working-class solidarity and freedom, with complex politics at play.
by Adrian Daub via Dreams in the Which House on November 3, 2024
Uncle Sam with World War II military aircraft; Depression era bread line in front of automobile ad billboard.

It’s Going to Take a Constant Fight to Preserve the Historical Record

The National Archives museum is backsliding into a sanitized retelling of American history. Don’t assume truth will prevail.
by Nathan J. Robinson via Current Affairs on October 31, 2024
A car in a dark night on an empty road with a ghostly apparition.

The Vanishing Hitchhiker Legend Is an Ancient Tale That Keeps Evolving

The classic creepy story—a driver offers a lift to a stranger who is not of this world—has deep roots and a long reach.
by Mark Hay via Atlas Obscura on October 10, 2024
Essay entitled "America," full of editorial markings.

America Is Not America Yet

On American history and the history of the word “America.”
by Alexander Aviña via The Dial on October 3, 2024
Sheriff Joe Arpaio riding in the back of a convertible car painted like an American flag.

Are Sheriffs Above the Law?

Many vignettes of sheriffs in action are dramatic and alarming. But how representative are they?
by Linda Greenhouse via New York Review of Books on September 12, 2024
Twin towers missing; twin towers visible with surroundings missing.

How the War on Terror Warped the American Left

A new book on how 9/11 altered the national psyche also demonstrates how it stunted progressive politics.
by Gal Beckerman via The Atlantic on September 10, 2024
A screenshot from "Red Dead Redemption 2" of cowboy protagonist Arthur Morgan riding a horse in a western landscape.

What Red Dead Redemption II Reveals About Our Myths of the American West

On the making of a centuries-old obsession at the heart of American national identity.
by Tore C. Olsson via Literary Hub on August 28, 2024
Foggy hills in Appalachia.

Love in the Time of Hillbilly Elegy: On JD Vance’s Appalachian Grift

Justin B. Wymer knows a snake when he sees one.
by Justin B. Wymer via Literary Hub on August 27, 2024
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