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Bruce Springsteen performing live onstage during the Born In the U.S.A. tour.

Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska and Born in the U.S.A. Captured Two Sides of Reagan’s America

Springsteen's albums offer a tragic-romantic view of the working class in Reagan-era America.
by William Harris via Jacobin on October 10, 2023
The Dead Kennedys against a graffiti wall.

Punk Versus Reagan

A new book on American punk paints the movement as the last gasp of left-wing cultural resistance in the 1980s.
by Alexander Billet via Jacobin on November 9, 2020
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
"REM" musicians pose in front of a mirror.

How R.E.M. Created Alternative Music

In the cultural wasteland of the Reagan era, they showed that a band could have mass appeal without being cheesy, or nostalgic, or playing hair metal.
by Mark Krotov via The New Yorker on November 13, 2024
Montage of 1980s Yuppies and a Trump rally.

How 1980s Yuppies Gave Us Donald Trump

If it weren’t for the young urban professionals of the 1980s, we’d never have MAGA.
by Tom McGrath via Politico Magazine on June 4, 2024
Sandinista rebels ride a tank in Managua in 1979.
partner

The U.S. Isn’t the Main Character of This History

Researching the Sandinista Revolution from Nicaraguans’ perspective.
by Mateo Jarquín via HNN on May 14, 2024
Keith Haring spray painting

Keith Haring, the Boy Who Cried Art

Was he a brilliant painter or a brilliant brand?
by Jackson Arn via The New Yorker on March 4, 2024
A illustration depicts the Hopkinsville Goblins incident from 1955, when a group claims they were assaulted by aliens of some sort.

The Long, Surprising Legacy of the Hopkinsville Goblins

Or, why families under siege make for great movies.
by Colin Dickey via Atlas Obscura on February 8, 2024
1988 Republican presidential candidates on the debate stage.
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Republicans Didn’t Always Run Far to the Right in Presidential Primaries

The 1988 presidential primary showed it wasn't always like this — and helped guide the GOP to where it is now.
by Robert L. Fleegler via Made By History on June 8, 2023
Bill Clinton in the background, another man in the foreground.

What the 1990s Did to America

The Law and Economics movement was one front in the decades-long advance of a revived free-market ideology that became the new American consensus.
by Henry M. J. Tonks via Public Books on May 17, 2023
Naomi Oreskes, sitting with her hands resting on her knees

America's Toxic Romance With the Free Market

How market fundamentalists convinced Americans to loathe government.
by Naomi Oreskes, Claudia Dreifus via The Nation on February 17, 2023
Scrapbook style image of Bruce Springsteen, washed in red tones, playing guitar in front of a black-and-white background of an empty landscape

Forty Years of Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Nebraska’

Decades after its release, the haunted highways and haunted characters of the Boss’s largely acoustic masterpiece still haunt the American psyche.
by Elizabeth Nelson via The Ringer on December 14, 2022
Ronald Reagan pointing at a graph explaining his tax policy.
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Inflation Opened the Door to American Neoliberalism

An excerpt from "The Hidden History of Neoliberalism."
by Thom Hartmann via HNN on September 11, 2022
When Tom Cruise starred in Top Gun in 1986, it wasn’t just a box office bonanza — it was a boon to the US military. Paramount Pictures

Hollywood and the Pentagon: A Love Story

For the Pentagon, films like "Top Gun: Maverick" are more than just a movie.
by Alissa Wilkinson via Vox on May 27, 2022

How Did the GOP Become the Party of Ideas?

If Trump was the end of the “party of ideas,” the rise of Reagan was its start. But what were those “ideas” in the first place, and were they really as new as people said?
by Lawrence B. Glickman via Boston Review on December 9, 2020
Reagan in car

What the Rise of Reagan Tells Us About the Age of Trump

Rick Perlstein's "Reaganland" charts the conservative counter-revolution that moved the US to the right.
by Nick Burns via New Statesman on October 14, 2020
Black and white photo montage of the cover of We're Not Here to Entertain, with a punk rock singer and Ronald Reagan, superimposed on a background of Minor Threat playing on stage.
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Remember Punk Rock? Probably Not...: The Real Culture War of 1980's America

When most people hear the word “punk,” they think of drug addled, nasty behavior. The truth is, it was driven by a visceral hatred for the president.
by Kevin Mattson via HNN on August 30, 2020

An Oral History of the Members Only Jacket

On the fixture of white yuppiedom and icon of post-ironic millennial hipsterdom.
by Andrew Fiouzi via MEL on March 7, 2020

White Power

A review of two recent books about white paramilitarism in the wake of the Cold War.
by Thomas Meaney via London Review of Books on August 1, 2019

The Vice President’s Men

In the 1980s, vice-president George H.W. Bush was secretly the most important decision-maker in America's intelligence world.
by Seymour M. Hersh via London Review of Books on January 4, 2019
George H.W. Bush and Barbara Bush in church.
partner

How George H.W. Bush Enabled the Rise of the Religious Right

Religious conservatives used the Bush presidency to launch their takeover of the GOP.
by Neil J. Young via Made By History on December 5, 2018
Pat Buchanan surrounded by balloons at a campaign rally.

The Year the Clock Broke

How the world we live in already happened in 1992.
by John Ganz via The Baffler on November 5, 2018

The Body in Poverty

The decline of America’s rural health system and its toll on my family.
by Sarah Smarsh via The Nation on September 26, 2018
James Baldwin.

James Baldwin’s Ideas and Activism during the 1980s

Baldwin's often overlooked final years of activism during the 1980's.
by Aderson François via Black Perspectives on September 20, 2018
Desk calendar illustrated by its owner.

A Disgruntled Federal Employee's 1980s Desk Calendar

A nameless Cold Warrior grew frustrated in his Defense Department job, and poured out his feelings in an unusual way.
by Ted Widmer via The Paris Review on June 13, 2018
Reagan giving his "tear down this wall" speech at the Brandenburg Gate in 1987.

Ronald Reagan and the Cold War: What Mattered Most

By seeking to talk to Soviet leaders and end the Cold War, Reagan helped to win it.
by Melvyn P. Leffler via Texas National Security Review on June 5, 2018
JFK accompanies a man and woman walking through the wreckage of a tornado.
partner

How Farmers Convinced Scientists to Take Climate Change Seriously

Rural Americans once led the fight to link extreme weather like Hurricane Harvey and human activity. What changed?
by Justin McBrien via Made By History on August 27, 2017
The front pages of major newspapers the day after the Greensboro Massacre.

Fighting the Klan in Reagan’s America

The KKK was on the march in the 1980s. What strategies worked to stem their rise?
by Branko Marcetic via Jacobin on August 25, 2017

Scaramucci’s Removal Evokes White House Turmoil During the Reagan Years

Anthony Scaramucci's resignation after 10 days broke a record held by Ronald Reagan’s communications director.
by Matt Giles via Longreads on July 31, 2017

The Notion of Tax Reform in Historical Perspective

President Trump's tax plan may be "great", but it will likely not be truly transformative.
by Ajay K. Mehrotra via Process: A Blog for American History on July 13, 2017
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