Bison once dominated the Great Plains but were nearly wiped out by hunters in the 1800s. Now scientists are learning that bison’s presence improves plant and wildlife diversity on the prairies.
Many homes, parks and businesses in US cities stand on former manufacturing sites that may have left legacy hazardous wastes behind. A new book calls for more research into our urban industrial past.
Peter C. Mancall, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
The Pilgrims repeatedly thanked God for their good fortune. But without two earlier developments, the entire undertaking at New Plymouth would have likely failed.
In 1968, Lyndon Johnson’s ridicule of presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey as weak and feminine tells us something about how a party of progressives still struggles with the idea of masculinity.
In scrutinizing statues honoring Confederate figures, journalists have overlooked military bases named after generals who fought to defend the slavery of black people.
The claim of “resistance” inside the White House offers the possibility of government by Trump appointees who prefer to keep their positions rather than publicly denounce a man they disapprove of.
Enslaved workers used to grow cotton and mill flour. Now prisoners grind beef and crate eggs. Here, a historian explores Americans’ troubling habit of consuming the products of slave labor.
Huge fires roared through Yellowstone National Park in the summer of 1988, scorching one-third of the park. Since then the park has been a valuable lab for studying how forests recover from fires.
Confrontational characters spouting conspiracy theories and fringe ideas have been around since American broadcasting began. With Alex Jones banished from the web, someone else will take his place.
The Ogalalla Aquifer is a vast underground lake that irrigates farms across the US Great Plains. It took thousands of years to fill, but human use could drain it in roughly a century.
Many cities are removing their Confederate statues. But pioneer monuments represent a racist past, too. There are at least 200 of them, and their future is now being debated.