History

Less than a month after Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed into law a bill he described as "a strong move to abolish critical race theory in Texas"—which educators worry will limit how they can talk...

Slavery and arguments about race were not only at the heart of the American founding; it was what united the states in the first place. We have been reluctant to admit just how thoroughly the...

Why do you love the United States of America? There is no better time to ask that question than on Independence Day. The answer to that question can and should tell us a great deal...

Who discovered America? The common-sense answer is that the continent was discovered by the remote ancestors of today’s Native Americans. Americans of European descent have traditionally phrased the question in terms of identifying the first...

A global trade in feathers, with London at its heart, saw hundreds of millions of birds killed every year. Emily Williamson waged a long and furious campaign against it

In the Los Angeles club scene of the 1960s, Sir Lady Java—a dancer, comedian and drag queen—was a two-shows-a-night fixture. “I loved the people that came to see me, it delighted me,” she says, flipping...