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Martin Van Buren

The Prudence and Principles of Martin Van Buren

The eighth president defined the future of politics.
1860 political cartoon depicting Lincoln as a "Wide-Awake"
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A Posthumous Romance of White Male Reunion

The history of deriving political meaning from Abraham Lincoln’s sexuality.
Elaine May and Walter Matthau sitting on a bench in May’s film A New Leaf.

May Days

A new biography of an elusive comic talent.
New Yorker magazine from November 17, 1962, open to Baldwin's essay.

On James Baldwin’s “Letter from a Region in My Mind”

The essay served as a definitive diagnosis of American race relations. Events soon gave it the force of prophecy.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

History Warns Us About Cabinet Members Like RFK Jr.

If RFK is confirmed, he is likely to fail for reasons similar to those for past political choices for the cabinet.
Airplane flying over a muddy, congested road near the Hoover-Washington Airfield in the 1930s.

The Humble Beginnings of the National Airport

A swamp with a busy road going right through the middle, Washington’s airport was called “a disgrace.”

Farmer George

The connections between the first president’s commitment to agricultural innovation and his evolving attitudes toward his enslaved laborers at Mount Vernon.
Perle Mesta laughing at a dinner party.

Washington’s Hostess with the Mostes’

Dinner parties in the capital have long been a path to power, but Perle Mesta had her eye on a different prize.
Kendrick Lamar in the spotlight performing a concert.

Bad Beef

Rap beef is form of capitalist accumulation that enriches artists—and, most of all, the corporate suits that run their record labels.
Jimmy Carter examines solar panels to be installed at the White House.

Jimmy Carter, Green-Energy Visionary

As President, he told us that we needed to shift to solar power. We should have listened to him then.
Still from "The Apprentice."

The Power Broker: Roy Cohn on Screen

The closeted right-wing operative has become a tragic character in the American repertory.
Reagan and supporters at a campaign rally in 1984.

Reagan Resurgent?

Commentary on America’s 40th president often misses how the Gipper blended principles and pragmatism for a truly conservative statesmanship.
Still from the documentary "Obsessed with Light", depicting Loie Fuller on stage in a gown.

A Dazzling Light in Dance History

When dancer Loïe Fuller’s spinning garment reflected the stage lights, it took on a life of its own, beguiling those in New York, Berlin, and Paris.
A painting of Roland G. Hazard.

The Hazards of Slavery

Scott Spillman reviews Seth Rockman’s “Plantation Goods: A Material History of American Slavery.”
Photo contact sheet from Ronald Reagan speech on Nicaragua in 1986.
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Letting the World Scream

The U.S., Nicaragua, and the International Court of Justice in the 1980s.
Margaret Sanger and Mary Ware Dennet

The Frenemies Who Fought to Bring Birth Control to the U.S.

Though Margaret Sanger and Mary Ware Dennett shared a mission, they took very different approaches. Their rivalry was political, sometimes even personal.
Drawing of George Washington watching over a group of enslaved people working in a field at Mount Vernon.
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Even George Washington Was a Tyrant

We don't need to find heroes in our past presidents. We need to try to understand that tyranny has always been part of American freedom.

The Case Against New York Times v. Sullivan

The malice test is the result of judicial activism and should be rejected by a Court that understands its task as the discovery, not the invention of law.
Taylor Swift's Instagram post endorsing Kamala Harris. Swift is holding a cat and facing the camera, dressed in black.

Taylor Swift and the History of the Celebrity Endorsement

Do pop culture interventions in presidential elections make a difference?
Medicine chest.

The Trial That Sparked Maine's 1840 Abortion Statute

Maine passed its first abortion statute in 1840, not long after the pardon of Dr. Call. Could there be a connection?
George Floyd protest

Reflections of the 60th Anniversary of Urban Uprisings in America

The media narrative used to discredit urban rebellions as violent betrayals of the civil rights movement has been attached to protests ever since.
A drawing of 10 identical women in historical cooking, but nine of them are colored green and one of them is red.

Anthony Bourdain on the Life and Legacy of a Truly Infamous Cook: Typhoid Mary

“Mary Mallon was a cook. And her story, first and foremost, is the story of a cook.”
Illustration of Willie Mayes holding a baseball bat, while men watch from the city.

A Giant of a Man

The legacy of Willie Mays and the Birmingham ballpark where he first made his mark.
George Washington

The Moment of Truth

The reelection of Donald Trump would mark the end of George Washington’s vision for the presidency—and the United States.

How John Lewis Put a Legacy of Heroism to Use

As the civil-rights era receded, his personal heroism loomed larger. But movement politics didn’t easily translate into party politics.
Cartoon of a person squished upside-down in a city high-rise.

The Death and Life of Progressive Urbanism

Blue America lacks a Gov. Ron DeSantis: someone remaking a state or major city in the image of a well-articulated ideology.
Ulysses S. Grant finishing his memoir shortly before he died.

Grant vs. the Klan

New books reconsider how Ulysses S. Grant became a forceful defender of the rights of African Americans after the Civil War.
George Gallup reenacting his polling methods on a talk show.

The Problems with Polls

Political polling’s greatest achievement is its complete co-opting of our understanding of public opinion, which we can no longer imagine without it.
A handwritten envelope for court documents in "The United States v. Thomas Chittenden."

Guilty as Charged

Convicting Vermont’s first governor.
Kamala Harris on stage at a campaign rally

The Polling Imperilment

Presidential polls are no more reliable than they were a century ago. So why do they consume our political lives?

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