Presidents past have used a nearly limitless power of pardon to halt criminal prosecutions before. What's to stop Trump?
Academic rigor, journalistic flair
Articles on US history
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The Pilgrims repeatedly thanked God for their good fortune. But without two earlier developments, the entire undertaking at New Plymouth would have likely failed.
Researchers have analyzed data from the last 50 years of medals to learn what presidents consider important and what legacy they hope to leave behind.
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.
From Thomas Jefferson to Donald Trump, the idea of the little guy ignored by politicians has loomed large in American political rhetoric.
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.
The reverberations of JFK's assassination can still be felt to this day in the paranoid and racialised politics of the American right
How politicians have won over voters through the art of the comeback throughout history.
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.
A giant of the US political scene, John McCain had friends and enemies on all sides.
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.
Fifty years ago, an insurance agent named Paul Simpson was convinced of rampant bias on the evening news. So he embarked on a project to record each broadcast and store them at Vanderbilt University.
An American pilot. A German aide on Capitol Hill. In the first and second world wars, the FBI effectively uprooted foreign influence campaigns. Today, the agency faces an uphill battle.
From the 1930s to the 1960s, 'The Negro Motorist's Green Book' and 'Travelguide: Vacation and Recreation Without Humiliation' offered African-American roadtrippers lists of black-friendly businesses.
The Whole Earth Catalog was a blueprint for sustainability that envisioned humans living in balance with nature. Its creative spirit was welcomed in a year riven by war, assassinations and riots.
A historian explains the significance of the Emmett Till murder for the civil rights movement.
In 1987, Anthony Kennedy was nominated to end a titanic Supreme Court fight. Could his putative successor trigger another one?
Top contributors
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Associate Professor of History, Pennsylvania State University
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Distinguished Professor of History and Environmental Studies, Pennsylvania State University
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Professor of Journalism, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis
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Teaching Fellow, Queen Mary University of London
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PhD Candidate in History, University of Leeds
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Associate Professor of History and African and African Diaspora Studies, University of Texas at Austin
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Ruth Coulter Heede Professor of Art History, Case Western Reserve University
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Executive Director, International Association for Communication and Sport, Emeritus Professor of Communication, Saint Xavier University
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Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science, Amherst College
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Associate Professor and Reader in History and American Studies, Northumbria University, Newcastle
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Professor of History, University of the Pacific
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W. M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis and History, Pomona College
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Professeur d'Histoire et civilisation US, Université Paris Diderot – USPC
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Associate Professor of African and Afro-American Studies, Brandeis University
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Curator of Caribbean Archaeology, University of Florida
