Thomas Jefferson

How Upton Sinclair’s 1934 run for governor of California inspired a cult.

Greg Grandin’s new book charts the past and present of American expansionism and its high human costs.

America’s long history of manipulating its headcount for political gain.

The history of presidential campaigns shows the extent to which the language of politics remains gendered.

Americans tend to see their country as a nation-state, not an imperial power.

He never denounced slavery and was brutal towards American Indians, but remains a popular figure. Why?

Slavery and the legacy of white supremacy.

Thomas Paine, the most radical of American revolutionaries, perhaps most fully understood the millennial potential of the new Republic.

From the day it was inaugurated, the Statue of Liberty has symbolized the tensions between national independence and universal human rights.

A historian assesses Donald Trump’s claim that the first president faced his own allegations of sexual assault.

A review of four books that all deal with the long-lasting contradictions between the mythology and reality of farming.

The Founders designed a government that would resist mob rule. They didn’t anticipate how strong the mob could become.

Trump’s critic is utilizing a practice employed by many of the Founding Fathers to protect truth from power.

The region was at the epicenter of eugenic policy-making in the first half of the 20th century.

Economic rationales for schooling are eroding democracy.

July 4th celebrates the signing of the Declaration of Independence, but we don’t even have the original!

The tension between nationalist ambitions and republican principles goes all the way back to our nation’s founding.

The history of evangelicalism in America is shot through with fear—but it also contains an alternative.

To preserve the political and cultural preeminence of white Americans against a tide of demographic change, the administration has settled on a policy of systemic child abuse.

How the Enlightenment created modern race thinking, and why we should confront it.