The past four hundred years have seen unprecedented growth in virtually every conceivable realm of life, from medicine to the arts, technology to finance. Far too often, however, when we think of the movers, shakers, and innovators behind these trans...

"The American people sees itself advance across the wilderness, draining swamps, straightening rivers, peopling the solitude, and subduing nature", wrote Alexis de Tocqueville in 1835. That's largely how we still think of nineteenth-century America t...

In 1620, separatists from the Church of England set sail across the Atlantic aboard the Mayflower. Understanding themselves as spiritual pilgrims, they left to preserve their liberty to worship God in accordance with their understanding of the Bible....

American soldiers overseas during World War II were famously said to be "overpaid, oversexed, and over here". But the assaults, rapes, and other brutal acts didn't only happen elsewhere, far away from a home front depicted as safe and unscathed by th...

Bridging women's history, the history of the South, and African American history, this book makes a bold argument about the role of white women in American slavery. Historian Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers draws on a variety of sources to show that slave?...

Adding new depth to our understanding of early New England society, this riveting account of Thomas Morton explores the tensions that arose from competing colonial visions. A lawyer and fur trader, Thomas Morton dreamed of a society where Algonquian...

When we talk about the economy, "the market" is often just an abstraction. While the exchange of goods was historically tied to a particular place, capitalism has gradually eroded this connection to create our current global trading systems. In "Trad...

What does democracy look like? And when should we cause trouble to pursue it? "Troublemakers" fuses photography and history to demonstrate how racial and economic inequality gave rise to a decades-long struggle for justice in one American city. In di...

While the American Revolution led to domestic peace and liberty, it ultimately had a catastrophic global impact – it strengthened the British Empire and led to widespread persecution and duress. From the opium wars in China to anti-imperial rebellion...

A fierce critique of civil religion as the taproot of America's bid for global hegemony Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Walter A. McDougall argues powerfully that a pervasive but radically changing faith that "God is on our side" has inspired U.S. f...