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Lee Atwater’s Infamous 1981 Interview on the Southern Strategy

The 42 minute recording, acquired by James Carter IV, confirms Atwater’s incendiary remarks and places them in context.
by Rick Perlstein via The Nation on November 13, 2012
Thaddeus Stevens imagined as a boxer.

Remarkable Radical: Thaddeus Stevens

Thaddeus Stevens was a fearsome reformer who never backed down from a fight.
by Steve Moyer via Humanities on November 1, 2012
Leone Baxter and Clem Whitaker

The Lie Factory: How Politics Became a Business

The field of political consulting was unknown before Leone Baxter and Clem Whitaker founded Campaigns, Inc., in 1933.
by Jill Lepore via The New Yorker on September 17, 2012
Ronald Reagan.

Conservatism: A State of the Field

Does recognizing the importance of conservatism in the twentieth century make us see the arc of American history in a new way?
by Kim Phillips-Fein via Journal of American History on December 1, 2011
A man at a Tea Party rally in 2010, dressed in colonial clothes and standing in front of a Don't Treat On Me flag with his fist raised.
partner

Teed Off

Did the 2010 Tea Party Movement really have anything in common with 1773? What did the history of populism suggest about the Tea Party's future?
via BackStory on May 21, 2010
William Jennings Bryan, c. 1910s.

All You Need Is Love

The complex history, career, and legacy of one of America's most popular speakers and reformers.
by Ronald Steel via New York Review of Books on June 22, 2006
George W. Bush at a press conference on Iraq, March 3, 2003.

The First Casualty

The selling of the Iraq war.
by Spencer Ackerman, John B. Judis via The New Republic on June 30, 2003
George W. Bush

George W. Bush Declares a War on Terror

Bush’s 2002 State of the Union address kicked off a war that continued well into the 21st century.
via Voices & Visions on January 29, 2002

Ronald Reagan Jokes about the USSR

Reagan's use of jokes to openly mock the Soviet system were part of his broader Cold War strategy.
via Voices & Visions on March 28, 1988
Screen capture of Carter at a podium giving his human right speech to university graduates.

Jimmy Carter Promotes Human Rights

Carter’s speech lays out his commitment to implement human rights into U.S. foreign policy.
via Voices & Visions on May 22, 1977
Senator Joseph R. McCarthy speaking

The Paranoid Style in American Politics

It had been around a long time before the Radical Right discovered it.
by Richard Hofstadter via Harper’s on November 1, 1964
Robert Welch, founder of the John Birch Society, standing next to a portrait of the group's namesake, Captain John Morrison Birch.

December 9, 1958: The John Birch Society Is Founded

“Together with other ‘know nothing’ organizations scattered through the country, it represents a basic, continuing phenomenon in American society.”
by Richard Kreitner, Hans Engh via The Nation on December 9, 1958
Grover Cleveland

The Gilded Age Roots of American Austerity

Both Trump and Cleveland employed the rhetoric of worthiness and efficiency, anti-fraud and anti-corruption, as justifications for their austerity measures.
by Dale Kretz via Jacobin on July 17, 2025
A magnifying glass rests atop Arthur Schlessinger's THe Cycle of American History.

What If the Political Pendulum Doesn’t Swing Back?

"The Cycles of American History" foresaw American voter dealignment, and an age of voters prioritizing personality over party—but it didn’t anticipate Trump.
by Michael Brenes via The New Republic on July 11, 2025
Japanese-American man in a military uniform.

He Spent His Life Trying to Prove That He Was a Loyal U.S. Citizen. It Wasn’t Enough.

How Joseph Kurihara lost his faith in America.
by Andrew Aoyama via The Atlantic on July 9, 2025
A man walks down the street dressed as Uncle Sam and carries a large baby Donald Trump doll.

Cracked, Costly Fantasies

The legacy of right-wing ideologies in California.
by Dan O’Sullivan via Los Angeles Review of Books on June 28, 2025
H.A. Smith is sworn in as a first witness at a HUAC hearing.

American Hysteria

Red Scare can be read as solid history of the years it depicts—and chilling prophecy of the years to come.
by Maurice Isserman via Democracy Journal on June 18, 2025

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
Charles Sumner

How Charles Sumner Convinced Abraham Lincoln and the Union To Take a Stand Against Slavery

The domestic and international dynamics of the early days of the Civil War.
by Zaakir Tameez via Literary Hub on June 11, 2025
White South Africans who support Donald Trump in front of the U.S. Embassy in Pretoria, 2025.
partner

The History of White Refugee Narratives

The Trump Administration's reasons for resettling Afrikaners echo early U.S. debates about Haiti's independence.
by James Alexander Dun via Made By History on June 9, 2025

My Freedom, My Choice

A new book illuminates how freedom became associated with choice and questions whether that has been a good thing—for women in particular.
by David A. Bell via New York Review of Books on June 5, 2025
William F. Buckley reclines behind a desk, glasses in hand, a bulletin board of National Review magazine material behind him.

The Conservative Intellectual Who Laid the Groundwork for Trump

The political vision that William F. Buckley helped forge was—and remains today—focused less on adhering to principles and more on ferreting out enemies.
by Jack McCordick via The New Republic on June 3, 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
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.
by Rowan Williams via New Statesman on May 22, 2025
Photos of William F. Buckley and James Baldwin.

When William F. Buckley Jr. Met James Baldwin

In 1965, the two intellectual giants squared off in a debate at Cambridge. It didn’t go quite as Buckley hoped.
by Sam Tanenhaus via The Atlantic on May 20, 2025
The U.S.-Canada border, as seen in this satellite map, mostly runs along the 49th parallel — and wasn't chosen at random.

Trump Calls the U.S.-Canada Border an "Artificial Line." That's not Entirely True.

Just because it's man-made doesn't mean it's not legitimate.
by Rachel Treisman via NPR on May 9, 2025
Lt. Selfridge and Mr. Wright stepping into the Wright aeroplane at Fort Myer, Virginia.

Uh-Oh

“When you invent the plane, you also invent the plane crash.”
by Randy Malamud via The Pennsylvania Gazette on April 24, 2025
Lindsey R. Peterson.

'Home Builders': Free Labor Households and Settler Colonialism in Western Civil War Commemorations

On the gendered dimensions of trans-Mississippi Civil War memory, the idea of the single-family household, and the politics of expansion and settlement.
by Robert D. Bland, Lindsey R. Peterson via Muster on April 23, 2025
Abraham Lincoln

Was the Civil War Inevitable?

Before Lincoln turned the idea of “the Union” into a cause worth dying for, he tried other means of ending slavery in America.
by Adam Gopnik via The New Yorker on April 21, 2025
Elon Musk holds a chain saw as he shakes hands with Argentine president Javier Milei at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

The Method in the Far Right’s Madness

How today’s far right manages to combine the call for economic freedom with pseudoscience about natural hierarchies of race and IQ.
by Quinn Slobodian, Bartolomeo Sala via Jacobin on April 13, 2025
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