William Jennings Bryan

The complex history, career, and legacy of one of America's most popular speakers and reformers.

William Jennings Bryan stoked a worker revolt against protectionism that led to the first income tax.

If RFK is confirmed, he is likely to fail for reasons similar to those for past political choices for the cabinet.

A new history revisits “the Trial of the Century” and its legacy in contemporary politics.

Sean O’Brien’s speech at the RNC may represent a return to nonpartisan realpolitik for unions. But does that reflect labor's strength or its decline?

Think this year’s Democratic convention is going to be nuts? One hundred years ago, Democrats took 103 ballots—and more than two weeks—to choose a candidate.

The psychological forces driving “red COVID” have deep historical roots.

Fearful of increasing participation, elites of the era attempted to rein in democracy.

Eugene Debs’s unswerving commitment to democracy and internationalism was born out of his revulsion at the tyranny of industrial capitalism.

Suspending his presidential campaign might be the best way to advance Sanders’s movement, but it could leave some supporters bitter.

It's the transatlantic commentariat’s favorite political put-down. It’s also historically illiterate.

The “now more than ever” tendency is everywhere.

Populism stretches through the American experience.

Writers like Rick Perlstein miss the ways in which Trump’s rise is a story of discontinuity.

We are again caught between nationalists longing for an imagined past, and activists invoking ideals the nation has not attained.

Effective Republican organizing and intraparty divisions among Democrats solidified GOP political dominance until the 1930s.

Trump claimed that the income tax was passed for “reasons unknown to mankind” and caused the Great Depression. Here’s the real history.

It’s only a century since US diplomats first persuaded the world that it’s wrong for countries to annex their neighbours.

On the medallic art of the Gilded Age.

The only president before Trump to win, lose, and win again ended up decimating his own party during his second term.