Thomas Paine

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.

Fears of great wealth and the need for economic equality go back to the country’s origins.

A public uprising forced Boston to prioritize fighting smallpox over the economy in 1792.

Why did American policing get so big, so fast? The answer, mainly, is slavery.

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.

Judith Shklar fled Nazis and Stalinism before discovering in African-American history the dilemma of modern liberalism.

Eric Foner has helped us better understand the ambiguous consequences of what were almost always only partial victories.

"Inevitably, the age of national bootblacks and national oyster houses and national blacksmiths produced national history books."