Peter S. Onuf

When the federal government began to claim a stake in the public’s physical fitness, and the origins of the Presidential Physical Fitness Test.

Nasology was a 19th century pseudoscience which claimed to explain personality traits based on the shape of a person’s nose.

On the 1870s skirmish between John D. Rockefeller and the upstart competitors who built the country’s first long-distance oil pipeline.

How the mythologizing of the Union Army’s Irish Brigade helped dispel anti-Irish sentiment.

Women in the workplace, from 19th century domestic workers to the Rosies of World War II to the labs of Silicon Valley.

Using oral histories of early East Texas oil workers, recorded in the 1950s, we hear about the chaos and excess that accompanied the discovery of oil.

Syracuse University Geography professor Matt Huber discusses the 1930s oil boom in the American southwest, and the military might brought in to control it.

Tracing the evolution of Christmas from a drunken carnival to the peaceful, family-oriented, consumeristic ritual we celebrate today.

A time before “everyone” knew the story of Christopher Columbus, and the role of Washington Irving’s massive biography in creating the heroic Columbus myth.

An author's search for the "real" Christopher Columbus.

Columbus Day is here again -- along with the controversy over its namesake. How have earlier generations understood him?

Frederick Douglass’ 1852 speech is widely known as one of the greatest abolitionist speeches ever.

An explanation of the Manhattan Company, a bank disguised as a municipal water corporation that helped to transform Early Republican politics.

On factional strife in the Early Republic, and why parties themselves were universally despised.

The early controversy over whether or not to build the Washington Monument on the National Mall.

The anxiety about “Mexicanization” that ran through Reconstruction-Era politics, as Americans saw disturbing political parallels with their southern neighbor.

The Mexican origins of the birth control pill, and the trade dispute with the U.S. it generated.

Exploring the origins and impacts of the "March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom," on that event's 50th anniversary.

On America's iconic monuments and the idea of national remembrance.

On the movement away from midwifery towards hospital births.