Joseph McCarthy

A far right politics that developed in the middle of the 20th century has prevented Democrats from gaining as they have in suburbs elsewhere.

The John Birch Society pushed a darker, more conspiratorial politics in the ’50s and ’60s — and looms large over today’s GOP.

News organizations air lies from political figures more often than you’d think, but for very different reasons than Fox News.

"I idolized women like Marvel Cooke," Angela Davis tells Teen Vogue.

We can’t blame Joe McCarthy for this one. (Though he was a fan.)

Manhattan Project physicist was infamously stripped of his security clearance in 1954.

The FBI’s first director built the agency around some of his own worst instincts.

The author of a new biography explains how liberals played an important role in enabling Hoover’s antidemocratic crusade.

Before his abuses of power were exposed, he was celebrated as a scourge of Nazis, Communists, and subversives.

A new biography of Robert Welch traces the origins and history of the anti-Communist John Birch Society and provides historical perspective on the Trump era.

Is the Republican Party compatible with democracy?

Institutions meant to secure peace, from NATO to the U.N., date back to Truman’s Presidency. So do the conflicts threatening that peace.

A new book shows just how porous the dividing line has been between the far right and mainstream conservatism.

J. Edgar Hoover had both of them in his sights. Yet neither one was ever arrested. The untold story of how the Hall brothers beat the FBI.

The charges, while provocative, offer a framework to reckon with systemic racial injustice — past and present.

A short history of a made-up constitutional doctrine that gives presidents too much power.

The Trumpist wing of the GOP uses history as a bludgeon, without regard to context, logic, or proportionality.

The Rosenbergs were executed for being Soviet spies, but their sons have spent decades trying to clear their mother’s name. Are they close to a breakthrough?

A review of Jon Meacham's newest book and documentary.

The New York-to-Washington train had 21 cars, 700 passengers—and millions of trackside mourners.