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A policeman stoops down next to a roulette wheel and writes on a clipboard.

The Engines and Empires of New York City Gambling

As plans are laid for a new casino, one can trace, through four figures, a history of rivalry and excess, rife with collisions of character and crime.
Frederic Remington painting of cowboys galloping through the desert, firing guns over their shoulders at their pursuers.

“Lord, Teach My Hands To War, My Fingers To Fight”

The cowboy apocalypse and American gun fandom.
Mount Rushmore

On Myths and Monuments

Mount Rushmore and storytelling at America’s national parks.
Collage of gay film covers

Good Queers and Bad Queers

Myths are fed back as stereotypes and strawmen to divine some boundary for acceptability.
South Korean soldiers walking through a trench of dead bodies.

The Moral Distortions of the Official Korean War Narrative

June 25 marks the 75th anniversary of the start of the Korean War. But the truth is that the US was a willing partner in mass murder across the peninsula.
Phineas Gage.

How the ‘Myth of Phineas Gage’ Affects Brain Injury Survivors

Why does the diagnosis of Gage social ‘disinhibition’ lean so heavily on flimsy documentation about Gage, while overlooking the case of Eadweard Muybridge?
Conservative protesters hold signs and flags at a Tea Party protest.

Lone Star Futures

Texas might have been a place to start a conversation about widening the scope of civil liberties, but it has also been a place where those liberties end.
A collage of men with different hairstyles.

Bad Curls, Bad Character

The charged meaning of hair in 19th-century America.
A line of Marines firing from behind a barricade.

Neither Marine nor Maggot

"Full Metal Jacket" and the crisis of masculinity.
The all seeing eye reveals that the American flag is melting.

America’s Broken Commonwealth

The nation’s founding myth was based on faith and solidarity – but it also contained the roots of today’s democratic crisis.
John Trumbull’s painting of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, 1819.

Who Invented the “Founding Fathers?”

The making of a myth.
Vintage illustration of three generations of a 1950s American family, sitting in their living room watching television (screen print), 1950.

How Social Reactionaries Exploit Economic Nostalgia

Conservatives think we need traditional hierarchies to reverse social decline; But it’s the economic equality created by strong unions that Americans miss.
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.
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.
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.”
A monument of the Minutemen line in Concord, Massachusetts.
partner

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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Workers with shovels constructing the Panama Canal.
partner

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.
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.

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