Thomas Paine

While the concept stretches back centuries, it has garnered significant attention in recent decades.

Historians Rosemarie Zagarri and Holly Brewer explain the anti-monarchical origins of the Constitution and the presidency.

'All men are created equal' coexisted with the understanding that not all were meant to be treated equally in life.

American thinkers consider what the already occupied West could fund.

Far from spelling the end of anti-market politics, basic income proposals are one place where it can and has flourished.

Americans disparaged the British as arsonists. But the rebels fought with fire too.

They looked at France and said: “Make it make sense.”

Back when monarchs had much more power—and news was far from instantaneous—it had major implications in the American colonies.

A new history makes a case for the world-ordering power of wheat.

A correctional officer’s history of 19th century prisons and modern-day parallels. From Sing Sing to suicide watch, torture treads a fine line.

Recent books by Woody Holton and Alan Taylor offer fresh perspectives on early US history but overstate the importance of white supremacy as its driving force.

Confederates’ quest for bones connects to a bizarre history of the use, and misuse, of human remains.

George III was a model monarch, whose reputation finally deserves rehabilitation a quarter of a millennium later.

The time when Harvard made an atheist their head chaplain.

As an attorney, Derrick Bell worked on many civil-rights cases, but his doubts about their impact launched a groundbreaking school of thought.

Early Americans conscripted the universe into their nation-building project.

Maritime workers who were basically kidnapped into the British Royal Navy were a key force in the War of Independence.

When African Americans allied themselves with the British, the Patriots were enraged, and they acted.

Abraham Lincoln is widely revered, while many Americans consider John Brown mad. Yet it was Brown’s strategy that brought slavery to an end.

How today's protests are struggling to reclaim the vision of the great abolitionist leader.