Exhibits

Exhibit

Polarized Lenses

The battle lines taking shape across America's political, media, and cultural spaces seem to be thickening by the day. How can history help us navigate this growing polarization?

Exhibit

Federal Bureaucracy

The federal government is the nation’s biggest employer. To many, its size is a problem in itself. This exhibit asks: how big is too big, and what do we miss when we focus on size alone?

Exhibit

American Corruption

The constant tug of war between those who try to bend government for their own gain and those who try to root out corruption and reform the system.

Exhibit

Social Safety Net

How Americans through the years have approached the thorny questions of identifying who the government is obliged to help and how such assistance should be funded and distributed.

Jimmy Carter speaking during his presidential campaign in 1976.
Exhibit

Legacies of Jimmy Carter

Historical reappraisals of Carter's legacies in foreign relations, the economy, the environment, and electoral politics.

Exhibit

Trumpism

A presidency often referred to as "unprecedented" has deep roots in American history.

Exhibit

Voting Rights: A Retrospective

Voting, a right not initially enshrined in the Constitution, has been secured, revoked, and contested since the nation's founding era.

Know-Nothing flag
Exhibit

The Many Faces of Nativism

As this exhibit shows, anti-immigrant sentiment has been a throughline of American history.

Exhibit

A Big Tent

Exploring the history of the Democratic Party, from its earliest days through the New Deal, the Long Sixties, and the post-Cold War era.

Declaration of Independence (1819), by John Trumbull
Exhibit

Declaring Independence

A collection of resources about the meanings of the 1776 document in its own time – and in ours.

Exhibit

President Precedents

How Americans understand the powers of the office and the legacies of past leaders.

Exhibit

“All Persons Born or Naturalized in the United States...”

A collection of resources exploring the evolving meanings of American citizenship and how they have been applied -- or denied -- to different groups of Americans.

Voter with mask
Exhibit

Election of 2020

A look back at what historians have had to say about this epic contest over the nation's future.

The Statue of Liberty as clouds roll in.

The End of Asylum

The second Trump administration has undone the division between political and economic migrants. Did it make sense to separate them to begin with?
Illustration of a founding father standing in front of a distorted mirror.

What the Founders Would Say Now

They might be surprised that the republic exists at all.
The founders at the Constitutional Convention with the "We the People" as a backdrop.

“Shall We Have a King?”

Some delegates at the Constitutional Convention wanted a strong executive, while others feared the American president might become a king.
President Nixon signs an executive order.

Nixon Now Looks Restrained

The former President once made an offhand remark about Charles Manson’s guilt. The reaction shows how aberrant Donald Trump’s rhetoric is.
Illustration of a Revolution, of a mob holding forks and knives, fighting men on horses.

The Insurrection Problem

Violence has marred the American constitutional order since the founding. Is it inevitable?
An 1877 depiction of Pontiac speaking at a tribal council.

How Native Nations Shaped the Revolution

The Founders were inspired—and threatened—by the independence and self-governance of nations like the Iroquois Confederacy.
National Guard soldiers patrolling in front of the White House.
partner

History Shows the Perils of Troops Policing American Cities

Sending Redcoats to American cities worked in the short term. But over time, it alienated even the colonists most loyal to the British.
Supreme Court and Donald Trump

The Supreme Court Should Listen to the Founders on Tariffs

James Madison and John Marshall would say Trump’s tariffs are legal.
King George III

The Myth of Mad King George

He was denounced by rebel propagandists as a tyrant and remembered by Americans as a reactionary dolt. Who was he really?
"The TVA System of Multi-Purpose Dams" sign // Getty Images

Will the TVA Survive Trump’s New Deal?

After a century of big-government bureaucracy, the U.S. has a developer-in-chief.
Bayard Rustin and A. Philip Randolph.

How Mamdani’s Predecessors Built Democratic Socialism

A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin’s Freedom Budget is the key to understanding the appeal of the Democratic nominee for NYC mayor.
Still of Zbigniew Brzezinski talking to President Jimmy Carter

The Thinking Person’s Hawk

Zbigniew Brzezinski’s ideas had a profound impact in his time. What would he think of the world we face today?
President Woodrow Wilson delivers an address in, 1915.

Democratization and Congressional Decline

To understand Congress’s abdication, look at the history of presidential selection.
Ruins of Mrs. Henry’s House, Battlefield of Bull Run.
partner

Reactionary Revolutionaries

In the mid-19th century, governments on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border set out to recast North America’s political landscape.
George McGovern at the Democratic National Convention in 1972

Magnificent Obsessions

How the Democrats have alienated a growing number working-class voters.
Page excerpting Louisiana's Reconstruction constitution and featuring portraits of its Black legislators.

The Long Struggle for Equality in the American South: Louisiana as a Test Case

Louisiana’s 1845 and 1852 conventions reveal partisan tensions over the economy that shaped Black struggles and opportunities for decades.
Adolf Eichmann taking an oath in 1961, during his trial.

The Uses and Abuses of “Antisemitism”

How a term coined to describe a nineteenth-century politics of exclusion would become a diagnosis, a political cudgel, and a rallying cry.
Sam Francis in front of a Confederate flag.

Only Power Matters

How Samuel Francis wrote the recipe for MAGA.
Robert McNamara.

The War Hawk Who Wasn’t

Newly discovered documents reveal Robert McNamara’s private doubts about Vietnam.
Young Donald Trump by the staircase in his fancy home.

The Real Estate Roots of Trumpism and the Coming Clash With Democratic Socialism

Trump’s brand of authoritarianism emerges out of New York City’s real estate industry. As mayor, Zohran Mamdani vows to curb that sector’s outsized power.
Black and white image of a MAGA rally.

Repeal the 20th Century: Pre-MAGA

To understand the intellectual coordinates of Trumpism we must look in unconventional places.
Picture of U.S. capital with the backdrop of the American Flag, with a red reflection.

The Treacherous Allure of the “Polarization” Dogma

Fareed Zakaria blames America’s crisis on “polarization,” but the real issue is asymmetric radicalization: the Right’s anti-democratic turn.
Split rectangle: one side blue, one side red.

How Today’s America Came About

Two different accounts from former Democratic Party insiders about the “giant U-turn” from postwar prosperity to the polarization and inequality of today.
Photograph of Friedrich Ratzel (1844–1904).

How National Self-Sufficiency Became a Goal of the Right

What looks like Trump-era economic nationalism has deep roots. German nationalists of the 1800s and fascist leaders of the 1930s imagined power through autarky.
James R. Schlesinger, 1973
partner

Politicizing Intelligence: Nixon’s Man at the CIA

James R. Schlesinger was only head of the CIA for six months, but he nevertheless ranks as the least popular director in the agency’s history.
Edit of different mayoral candidates distored to spiral

Fusionism Has Never Worked. Democrats Keep Trying Anyway.

Mamdani’s NYC mayoral rise revives debates over Democratic fusionism, echoing 1890s Populist struggles with establishment power.
Eric Schmitt

The Schmittian Enemy

What's up at the NatC Conference.
"Home in the Woods," an 1847 painting by Thomas Cole.

A Republican Excursion

As a new book on their travels together shows, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison's friendship went beyond politics.
Soldiers watching a nuclear explosion.

Why Don’t We Take Nuclear Weapons Seriously?

The risk of nuclear war has only grown, yet the public and government officials are increasingly cavalier. Some experts are trying to change that.
William F. Buckley Jr. (far right) with his brother, New York senator James L. Buckley, Ronald Reagan, and Barry Goldwater at National Review’s twentieth-anniversary celebration, New York City, November 1975

Conservatism’s Baton Twirler

A Republican administration that wages war against immigrants and colleges should be understood as the culmination of William F. Buckley conservative movement.