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Eco-Terrorists Aren't What They Used to Be

Fifty years on, "The Monkey Wrench Gang" remains a problematic text for environmental activists, who are inclined to endorse its violent tendencies.

by John Bicknell via Law & Liberty on June 13, 2025

Industrial plant releasing thick smoke into the sky.

Poisoned City: How Tacoma Became a Hotbed of Crime and Kidnapping in the 1920s

On the intersection of environmental contamination and violence in the Pacific Northwest.

by Caroline Fraser via Literary Hub on June 10, 2025

Political cartoon of General Jackson Slaying the Many Headed Monster (the Second National Bank).

The Ghost of Nicholas Biddle

Trump’s war against elite academia has created an uncanny parallel to the most dramatic fight in Jackson’s day—the attack on the 2nd Bank of the United States.

by Adam Rowe via Compact on June 2, 2025

Amelia Earhart and her husband.

Amelia Earhart’s Reckless Final Flights

The aviator’s publicity-mad husband, George Palmer Putnam, kept pushing her to risk her life for the sake of fame.

by Laurie Gwen Shapiro via The New Yorker on June 2, 2025

The insolvent brothers giving queer bail

Insolvent Brothers: The Generals Ethan and Ira Allen

How could two renowned, high-ranking men of the American Revolution have fallen into such dire straits that they feared the loss of all they worked for?

by Gary Shattuck via Journal of the American Revolution on May 22, 2025

John Trumbull’s painting of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, 1819.

Who Invented the “Founding Fathers?”

The making of a myth.

by George Dillard via Looking Through The Past on May 21, 2025

Mark Twain sits in thought on stone steps surrounded by nature while holding papers

Twain Dreams

The enigma of Samuel Clemens.

by John Jeremiah Sullivan via Harper’s on April 29, 2025

Aimee Semple McPherson in front of her Gospel Car, painted with the words "Jesus is coming soon - get ready."

The “Lady Preacher” Who Became World-Famous—and Then Vanished

Aimee Semple McPherson took to the radio to spread the Gospel, but her mysterious disappearance cast a shadow on her reputation.

by Casey N. Cep via The New Yorker on April 14, 2025

Edgar Watson Howe

The Sins and Sayings of E.W. Howe

A deeply skeptical, deeply American mind and its trail of sharp, clean sentences.

by Steve Szilagyi via 3 Quarks Daily on April 11, 2025

Green light in a dark sky.

On My Grandfather’s Novel: F. Scott Fitzgerald’s "The Great Gatsby" at 100

Reflections on the literary legacy of a timeless American novel.

by Eleanor Lanahan via Literary Hub on April 7, 2025

Richard Nixon scowling.

The Alarming Effort To Rewrite the History of Watergate

For decades, politicians distanced themselves from Nixon's Watergate legacy. Now, some are advancing a new history.

by Michael Koncewicz via Made By History on March 24, 2025

A UC Berkeley student picket supports a strike protesting demonstrators’ arrests, 1964.

Whose Side Are College Administrators On?

There’s a long history of politicians targeting student protesters — and of campus leaders abetting those efforts.

by Lauren Lassabe Shepherd via HNN on March 19, 2025

A portrait of Edgar Allen Poe.

The Most Overrated Writer in America

Do people really like Edgar Allen Poe?

by Naomi Kanakia via Woman of Letters on March 18, 2025

Shield with the words "For European Recovery Supplied by the United States of America."

Soft Power

What it means, why it matters, and where it started.

by Lindsay M. Chervinsky via Imperfect Union on March 15, 2025

Zora Neale Hurston’s Rediscovered Novel

A new publication obscures the canonical writer.

by Tiana Reid via The Yale Review on March 11, 2025

Malcolm X on the newspaper with Jimmy Breslin and Langston Hughes in the background.

How Two of America’s Biggest Columnists Reacted to the Assassination of Malcolm X

What Jimmy Breslin and Langston Hughes failed to imagine.

by Ted Hamm via Literary Hub on February 21, 2025

NAACP Legal Defense Fund button against lynching.

“Lynch Law in America”: Annotated

Ida B. Wells-Barnett, whose January 1900 essay exposed the racist reasons given by mobs for their crimes, argued that lynch law was an American shame.

by Ida B. Wells, Liz Tracey via JSTOR Daily on February 21, 2025

Sam Peckinpah looks into a film camera.

The Noble Savagery of Sam Peckinpah

“Bloody Sam” was born one hundred years ago this month.

by Christopher Sandford via Modern Age on February 19, 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

John Tower; Pete Hegseth.

In 1989, Senators Faced a Pete Hegseth Situation Very Differently

I covered the 1989 fight over George H.W. Bush's secretary of defense nominee. It feels awfully familiar.

by Fred Kaplan via Slate on January 23, 2025

Ronald Reagan

Revisiting the Panama Canal Debate of 1978

The uproar over Trump’s remarks about the Canal recalls a lively debate from the late 1970s.

by James W. Carden via The American Conservative on January 23, 2025

Drawings of Sadie James and Charles Page over a map of Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The True Story of Tulsa’s Forgotten Antihero, Sadie James

And a walk downtown in search of her saloon, the Bucket of Blood.

by Russell Cobb via The Pickup on January 23, 2025

Lerone A. Martin

Christian Nationalists Don’t Want Us To Remember the Real MLK

The same Christian ideology that inspired J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI to surveil MLK is alive and well in the Trump administration.

by Lerone A. Martin, Josiah R. Daniels via Sojourners on January 21, 2025

Grover Cleveland.

The President Trump Is Pushing Aside

Grover Cleveland enthusiasts aren’t thrilled that Donald Trump won a nonconsecutive presidential term.

by Russell Berman via The Atlantic on January 1, 2025

Jimmy Carter in the 1970s visiting a town in Brazil that commemorates Confederate expats.

Jimmy Carter, 1924-2024

As an individual, Jimmy Carter stood as a rebuke to our venal and heartless political class. As a politician, his private virtues proved to be public vices.

by Tim Barker via Origins of Our Time on January 1, 2025

President Jimmy Carter seated at desk in Oval Office, hands steepled.

Jimmy Carter Held the Door Open for Neoliberalism

His unwillingness to take a radical stance forced him to respond to events by imposing austerity and doing little to strengthen labor.

by Sean T. Byrnes via Jacobin on December 29, 2024

George HW Bush, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, and Richard Nixon at the Reagan Library opening.

Jimmy Carter Was a Successful (Conservative) President

Common conceptions of Carter are all wrong because they don’t acknowledge a crucial reality: he was a conservative.

by Paul Matzko via Made By History on December 29, 2024

Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter Was the True Change Agent of the Cold War

There’s a reason the 39th president is still revered by former Soviet dissidents.

by Michael Hirsh via Foreign Policy on December 29, 2024

A bird perched on top of a broken tree trunk, surrounded by snow covered bushes and trees.

For the Birds

In 1973, the Christmas Bird Count formed the basis for a press freedom case that centered on the impacts of DDT.

by Santiago Flórez via HNN on December 24, 2024

David Rubenstein

King David

Carlyle Group founder David Rubenstein has cultivated a reputation as a well-meaning advocate of history education. What does that image mask?

by Rick Perlstein via The American Prospect on December 24, 2024

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