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Black and white side by side of Presidents Nixon and Trump

Watergate's Ironic Legacy

Amidst the January 6 hearings, the fiftieth anniversary of Nixon’s scandal reminds us that it has only gotten harder to hold presidents accountable.
Painting of Venetian Glass Workers, by John Singer Sargent, c. 1880.

Work the Lazy Way

On Annie Payson Call’s advice to tired nineteenth-century workers.
A Ukranian peasant family poses with sacks of grain.

'The New York Times' Can't Shake the Cloud Over a 90-Year-Old Pulitzer Prize

In 1932, Walter Duranty won a Pulitzer for stories defending Soviet policies that led to the deaths of millions of Ukrainians.
The U.S. Capitol building at night.

A Capital History

Washington has long been a disproportionately gay city—a mecca for clever, ambitious young men who want to escape their hometowns’ prying eyes.
Illustration of Elizabeth Keckley
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Elizabeth Keckley's Memoir "Behind the Scenes, or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four in the White House"

Keckley’s decision to write about her employers from the viewpoint of a household laborer—she was seamstress to Mary Todd Lincoln—enraged audiences.
Chlorodyne bottles and other medicines on display with a wooden background

Potions, Pills, and Patents: How Basic Healthcare Became Big Business in America

Basic healthcare in the 20th Century greatly impacted the way that the drug business currently operates in the United States.
Portrait of Roscoe Conkling taken between 1860 and 1865.

The Senator Who Said No to a Seat on the Supreme Court — Twice

Roscoe Conkling was a successful politician and an able lawyer. But the colorful and irascible senator had no desire to serve on the high court.
Black-and-white image of two men behind bar

The Gilded Age In a Glass: From Innovation to Prohibition

Cocktails — the ingredients, the stories, the pageantry — can reveal more than expected about the Gilded Age.
Women wearing bathing suits and sashes stand in a row on the Atlantic City boardwalk in 1921, competing in a pageant.

How the Swimsuit Showdown Shaped the Miss America Contest

A new behind-the-scenes book, “There She Was,” and a Smithsonian collecting initiative celebrate the pageant’s centennial.
Photo collage of Republican men, with Donald Trump at the center.

A Short History of Conservative Trolling

On the laughing emptiness at the center of the Republican Party.
Collage of Stephen Crane with Civil War scenes

The Miracle of Stephen Crane

Born after the Civil War, he turned himself into its most powerful witness—and modernized the American novel.
Pro-abortion protests
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Before Roe v. Wade, U.S. Residents Sought Safer Abortions in Mexico

Transnational networks have long helped pregnant people navigate treatment options.
Tommie Smith holding shoe
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Amateurism, Sneaker Money, and the Forgotten Protest of the 1968 Games

One of the most audacious examples of product placement at the Olympics was staged by John Carlos and Tommie Smith.
A Native American in a cemetery, their back to the camera

My Relatives Went to a Catholic School for Native Children. It Was a Place of Horrors

After the discovery of 751 unmarked graves at the site of a former school for Native children in Canada, it is time to investigate similar abuses in the U.S.
André Michaux walking through a landscape of botanical drawings.

The Forgotten French Scientist Who Courted Thomas Jefferson—and Got Pulled Into Scandal

A decade before Lewis and Clark, André Michaux wanted to explore the American continent. Spying for France gave him that chance.

Decolonize Hipsters

The history of hipsters is a not-so-secret history of race in the Atlantic world.
Background photo shows secret deployment of Soviet nuclear-armed ballistic missiles. On the right is a photo of Juanita Moody.

The Once-Classified Tale of Juanita Moody: The Woman Who Helped Avert a Nuclear War

America’s bold response to the Soviet Union depended on an unknown spy agency operative whose story can at last be told.
Painting of the American flag.

Stars, Stripes and Dollars

Michael Prodger on the artists who make huge sums for painting the US flag.
Frank Zappa.

How Weird Was Frank Zappa?

Alex Winter’s new documentary about the musician fails to capture his deeply conventional streak.
A picture of Trump going through a shredder.

Will Trump Burn the Evidence?

How the President could endanger the official records of one of the most consequential periods in American history.
Chinese immigrants arrested in New Jersey in November 1934. One is smiling, all look disheveled.

An Explosive Government Report Exposed Family Separations and Other Immigration Horrors—in 1931

Lessons about “dark age cruelty” and the limits of reformism from 90 years ago.

How the 1619 Project Took Over 2020

It’s a hashtag, a talking point, a Trump rally riff. The inside story of a New York Times project that launched a year-long culture war.
Postal workers comfort each other after a 1991 mass shooting

“I Understand Why He Did It”

On the origins of "going postal."
Cartoon that shows a man struggling to shake a woman's hand because of her wide skirt.

Lampooning Political Women

For as long as women have battled for equitable political representation in America, those battles have been defined by images.

The Weight of History

A former Navy lawyer speaks about his decision to leak classified information on detainees at the infamous prison of Guantanamo.

The Forged Letter that Began a Mormon Succession Crisis

Miles Harvey on the life and times of James J. Strang.
Woman walking past a mural of Frederick Douglass
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Lessons for Sustaining Black Businesses After a Crisis

Private coalitions alone aren’t enough to address racial wealth gaps.
Donald Trump giving a speech in front of a large photo of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

‘The Most Ignorant and Unfit’: What Made America’s Worst Ever Leader?

The real challenge is not simply to replace Trump, but to fix a system that produces, promotes, and protects the toxicity that defines his presidency.

Eugenics and the White Moderate

Reflections on the COVID crisis from Reconstruction.

Can Slavery Reënactments Set Us Free?

Underground Railroad simulations have ignited controversy about whether they confront the country’s darkest history or trivialize its gravest traumas.

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