Excerpts

Textiles as Historical Texts

by Nicole Nehrig

On the women who helped make — and keep making — the Bayeux Tapestry.

The Founders’ Family Research

by Karin Wulf

Early American elites were fascinated with genealogy, despite the ways it attached them to the Old World.

A Ghost from Kitchens Across the Nation

by Lindsey Stewart

The 1893 World’s Fair and the origins of Aunt Jemima.

A Mere Mass of Error

by Philip Kadish

Two stories from the 19th century about government records being falsified to foment distrust of nonwhite Americans.

Slave Hunts as “Normal Policing”

by Miranda Spieler

In 18th century Paris, policemen accepted that property could take the form of people.

Irrelevant at Best, or Else Complicit

by Maggie Gram

The state of design in 1970.

An Attempt to Defeat Constitutional Order

by Marcus Alexander Gadson

After the Civil War, conservatives used terrorism, cold-blooded murder, and economic coercion to fight the new state constitution in South Carolina.

Lethal Injection Is Not Based on Science

by Corinna Barrett Lain

The history of the three-drug combo used in death-penalty executions. 

Are You Not Large and Unwieldy Enough Already?

by Andrew C. Isenberg

John Quincy Adams challenges the idea of an expanding American frontier. 

Mutant Capitalism

by Quinn Slobodian

How the dystopian visions of the nativist right are in keeping with a long tradition of neoliberal ideology.

“The End Is Coming! The End Is Coming!”

by Ross Benes

In the 1990s, an entire industry was born of trying to convince Americans that Beanie Babies were a great investment opportunity.

Telling Chestnut Stories

by Carolyn Barske Crawford

How to use public history and memories to mobilize people to solve environmental challenges.

Scared Out of the Community

by Abraham Hoffman

Between 1929 and 1939 approximately half a million Mexicans left the United States. Many of the departing families included American-born children to whom Mexico, not the United States, was the foreign land.

Creating the “Senior Citizen” Political Identity

by Linda Gordon

On the movement that fought for old-age pensions during the Great Depression.

There’s Some Spirit Left Yet

by Michael Meyer

When Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh tried to publish a birth control pamphlet, they ended up in court “on a charge of publishing a book alleged to be immoral.” 

“A Party for the White Man”

by Joshua D. Farrington

The scene at the 1964 Republican National Convention, when Barry Goldwater was nominated and black Republicans’ worst fears about their party were confirmed.

Lacking a Demonstrable Source of Authority

by Keith Richotte Jr.

On the test case that provoked the courts to decide whether the federal government had jurisdiction to exercise American criminal law over Native peoples on Native lands.

The Rise and Fall of Liberal Historiography

by Gabriel Winant

How historians changed their approach, from the 1960s to the present.

Merry, Manly Militias

by Eran Zelnik

Levity and play — eerily combined with anxiety, terror, and deadly violence — shaped the identity and image of Early Republic militias.

Expect Freedom Upon Arrival

by Bennett Parten

On the slow path to federal action on emancipation during the Civil War.