American History
Page-Turner
When Preachers Were Rock Stars
A classic New Yorker account of the Henry Ward Beecher adultery trial recalls a time in America that seems both incomprehensible and familiar.
Culture Desk
America’s Last Top Models
For decades, U.S. inventors sent in models with their patent applications—gizmos that reveal a secret history of unmet needs and relentless innovation.
Cultural Comment
The Intimate Reality of the J.F.K. Assassination
A visit to Dealey Plaza, after years of thinking and reading about the Kennedy assassination, came as a shock.
Persons of Interest
The Man Painting America’s Wars
For years, Adam Cvijanovic has been making giant murals in the military’s financial headquarters. The result is at once beautiful and unsettling.
Annals of Inquiry
Searching for a Fortress Built by People Who Escaped Slavery
Its ruins are somewhere in the swamps of Georgia. What will it take to find them?
Dispatch
The Siege of Wounded Knee Was Not an End but a Beginning
Fifty years ago, the Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Organization invited the American Indian Movement to Pine Ridge and reignited a resistance that has never gone away.
The Political Scene Podcast
Jon Meacham: Indictment Won’t Break Trump Fever
The writer and historian talks with David Remnick about the stakes of our political moment, and the “perennial” fight to preserve democracy.
On Television
Hulu’s Fascinating and Incomplete “1619 Project”
Nikole Hannah-Jones’s documentary series offers a damning portrait of American racism, but its emphasis on the past at times obscures the complexity of the present.
Shouts & Murmurs
America!: Other Eccentric Tycoons Who Have Ruined Things
For example, Jedediah Humble founded the Humblebrag Institute, transforming our conversational landscape.
Under Review
The Man Who Mastered Minor Writing
In both life and work, Evan S. Connell rejected the tidiness of narrative. He focussed, instead, on the details we’d rather ignore.
Daily Comment
The Long March Toward a National Latino Museum
A community whose role in U.S. history has been too often ignored is telling its story at the Smithsonian.
Culture Desk
Reckoning with the Slave Ship Clotilda
A new documentary tells the story of the last known slave ship to enter the United States and takes on the difficult question of how to memorialize America’s history of racial violence.
Photo Booth
Wendy Red Star’s Indigenous Gaze
The Crow photographer and multimedia artist confronts settler narratives with sly doses of “Indi’n humor.”
Books
When Tribal Nations Expel Their Black Members
Clashes between sovereignty rights and civil rights reveal an uncomfortable and complicated story about race and belonging in America.
Under Review
The Confounding Politics of Camping in America
For centuries, sleeping outside has been embraced or condemned, depending on who’s doing it.
Second Read
How a Book About America’s History Foretold China’s Future
In 1989, a young Chinese academic spent six months travelling in the United States. His insights are now central to Xi Jinping’s cultural crackdown.
American Chronicles
Why the School Wars Still Rage
From evolution to anti-racism, parents and progressives have clashed for a century over who gets to tell our origin stories.
American Chronicles
Did George Washington Have an Enslaved Son?
West Ford’s descendants want to prove his parentage—and save the freedmen’s village he founded.
Books
Harry Truman Helped Make Our World Order, for Better and for Worse
Institutions meant to secure peace, from NATO to the U.N., date back to Truman’s Presidency. So do the conflicts threatening that peace.
The New Yorker Interview
The Historian Scrutinizing Our Idea of Monuments
For Erin L. Thompson, destroying monuments is “a normal part of human life.” Why has it become so divisive?