The Reasons Republicans Are Still Backing Trump

The party Trump has inherited is hell-bent on continuing America’s long tradition of racism and imperialism.

Rebecca Gordon

Eric Foner’s Story of American Freedom

Charting the ironies of freedom won and lost during and after the Civil War, the American historian has also helped us better understand the ambiguous consequences of what were almost always only partial victories.

Michael Kazin

A Lawsuit at Harvard Pries Open Debates About Science and Reparations

Since 2011, Tamara Lanier has been battling the university over the ownership of daguerreotypes of her enslaved ancestors. Her fight tells us a lot about the racist roots of American science and the need for reparations.

Eamon Whalen

Letters From the November 11/18, 2019, Issue

Our Readers

Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Narratives of Freedom

History has always been a weapon in the hands of Ta-Nehisi Coates. Now, in his debut novel, the social critic and essayist sets out to recover those struggles for emancipation that have been lost to the past.

Elias Rodriques

The Workers That Built America

A new book puts the black working class at the center of American history.

William P. Jones

Letters From the October 14, 2019, Issue

Unrecognized labor… Taking offense… Hope amid troubles…

Our Readers

Stop Getting Married on Plantations

Monuments to slavery won’t lose their romantic allure until Americans understand the horrors of their own history. 

Patricia J. Williams

Conservatives’ Freakout Over the 1619 Project Reveals Their Fear of America’s Actual Past

It turns out conservatives love history—unless it’s true.

Jeet Heer

Henry Louis Gates Jr. and the Long Arc of Reconstruction

In his new book, Gates argues that the history of American democracy has always been one of constant push and pull.

Robert Greene II