New perspectives on how history is made
Two stories from the 19th century about government records being falsified to foment distrust of nonwhite Americans.
On the long history of governments attempting to restrict access to documents about their inner workings.
Films about the Iraq War prize “truth-telling,” but don’t offer many insights about the war itself.
In 18th century Paris, policemen accepted that property could take the form of people.
Why have generations of Londoners decided to make their lives on the city’s waterways?
Considering a novel as a whole, rather than as the sum of its parts, was an approach favored by mid-20th-century literary critics. It was also useful for fighting book bans.
The state of design in 1970.
In Memoirs of a Nobody, Henry Boernstein chronicles the militant immigrant organizing that helped keep St. Louis out of the hands of the Confederacy.
How to use public history and memories to mobilize people to solve environmental challenges.
The past and present of counterfactual history, from antiquity to the Napoleonic Wars to a few very active subreddits.
After the Civil War, conservatives used terrorism, cold-blooded murder, and economic coercion to fight the new state constitution in South Carolina.
What the history of the pocket calculator reveals about the future of AI in classrooms.
The history of the three-drug combo used in death-penalty executions.
The long history of promising an “efficient” federal government.
John Quincy Adams challenges the idea of an expanding American frontier.
How a myth about farmers taking on the British has fueled more than two centuries of exclusionary nationalism.
How the dystopian visions of the nativist right are in keeping with a long tradition of neoliberal ideology.
In 1841, John Tyler said he was the president. The Constitution said he wasn’t. What happened next?
In the 1990s, an entire industry was born of trying to convince Americans that Beanie Babies were a great investment opportunity.
The history of ivory-topped piano keys and the invisible human suffering caused by our cultural commodities.
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