The history of ivory-topped piano keys and the invisible human suffering caused by our cultural commodities.

There’s a long history of politicians targeting student protesters — and of campus leaders abetting those efforts.

Jimmy Carter is known for his defense of human rights worldwide. But in 1979, he threatened to deport thousands of Iranian student protesters.

Steven Spielberg’s 2012 film Lincoln might well have been called Stevens, after its alternate protagonist: the irascible chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Thaddeus Stevens. As ...

Were the Knights of the Golden Circle responsible for Lincoln’s assassination? No one knows, but far-right secret societies always draw power from speculation.

The Northeast caught fire this fall, in a way that recalls its past. History has some lessons about how to manage the region’s fire seasons to come.

Gladiator and Gladiator II have little to do with the Roman past. But they have a great deal to do with the American present.

The U.S. Justice Department recently hauled Google into court for violating an 1890 federal law designed to forestall the unjust consolidation of economic power. Known today as the Sherman Act ...

Revisiting the Agrarian-Distributists and their fabrication of an American past.

For every moment of historical significance, there is a figure — often hidden — who fed the figures we do remember.

When you dig beyond all purpose, digging becomes the purpose.

My new book, A Map of Future Ruins: On Borders and Belonging centers on the story of the 2020 fire that destroyed the largest refugee camp in Europe on the Greek island of Lesvos, and the six ...