ARCHIVE:
History
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Things Can Change
A century ago, there were forms of brutal violence considered so thoroughly American that they could never be banished. Today, they no longer exist.
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The Roger Williams Code
How a team of scholars decrypted a secret language—and discovered the last known work of the American theologian.
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Identity Politics in 1960
JFK made history as the first Catholic president. But his father never forgave the Church.
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Identity Politics in 1960
How Jack Kennedy lost the Catholic Church—but won the Jewish vote.
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Identity Politics in 1960
How JFK’s attempt to distance himself from the Catholic Church backfired.
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How Texas Could Mess With Us
Lone Star secessionists could (theoretically) get their wish.
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How Great an Emancipator?
Does Lincoln get too much credit for freeing the slaves—or not enough?
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Seeing the Federal Light
Chris Christie isn’t the first conservative governor to have a hurricane conversion.
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You Want My Support? How Much Are You Offering?
One Ohio county’s long, sordid history of selling its votes to the highest bidder.
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First Brother
Why is it taking RFK’s family so long to show us his papers from the Cuban Missile Crisis?
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The Battlefield Photos That Changed Everything
Alexander Gardner made these incredibly powerful images before newspapers could even print photographs.
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The Horror of Antietam
America’s deadliest day, as witnessed by Oliver Wendell Holmes, William McKinley, Rutherford B. Hayes, and Clara Barton.
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Nathaniel Hawthorne, Party Hack
Why did the famous novelist agree to write a campaign biography for an infamously bad president?
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The Lincoln Laws
Should we thank the Great Emancipator for codifying the law of war—or curse him?
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Why Is There No Liberal Ayn Rand?
American conservatives have a canon. Why don’t American liberals?
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The Chickens and the Bulls
The rise and incredible fall of a vicious extortion ring that preyed on prominent gay men in the 1960s.
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The Birth of America’s Banana King
An excerpt from Rich Cohen’s The Fish That Ate the Whale.
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Happy 200th Birthday, War of 1812!
A primer on America’s most bumbling, most confusing, and most forgotten conflict.
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The Boss of Bosses
One hundred years ago, John Pierpont Morgan was called before a Congress suspicious of his bank’s power and influence. Sound familiar?
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What Did Thomas Jefferson’s World Sound Like?
Recreating the soundscape of Monticello, from patriotic songs to the slap of the whip.
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A Secret Plot in Syria
An illustrated account of the 1949 coup—possibly CIA-assisted—that plunged the country into decades of political turmoil.
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“A Drunkard in the Gutter Is Just Where He Ought To Be”
Meet the man who invented the GOP’s defense of the wealthy—in 1883.
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“Patriotic Gore is Not Really Much Like Any Other Book by Anyone”
Revisiting one of the most important and confounding books ever written about the Civil War.
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When Gen. Grant Expelled the Jews
How a notorious anti-Semitic order changed the course of Jewish life in America—ultimately, for the better.
