Edward John Eyre

When Intellectuals Split: The Eyre Case

Public intellectuals in Great Britain disagreed on what to do with Governor Eyre after his heavy-handed response to the 1865 Morant Bay Rebellion in Jamaica.
Sandy Hook Lighthouse

To the Lighthouses: A Path to Nationhood

Instilling confidence among merchants and ship captains was an area in which most agreed the new federal authority could and should act.
U.S. Weather Bureau Balloon, c. 1909-1920

Long Before Sputnik: An Explosion of Federal Science

The National Academy of Sciences was created by the United States Congress during the American Civil War. The timing wasn’t coincidental.

Wanting to Believe In Rainmakers

A form of entertainment and outgrowth of desperation, self-styled rainmakers allowed the powerless people of the Great Plains to seemingly take action.
Turquoise Blue River Flowing Along Hindu Kush Mountain Range In Ghizer Valley, Gb, Pakistan.

High Water and Its Discontents

About half of the world’s population depends on water from the Hindu Kush Himalayan region. Can India's hydro-hegemony help avoid war over this limited resource?
A painting of John Donne

John Donne’s Listicle For the Well-Prepped Courtier

“The Courtier’s Library” is a list of books every courtier should know about, a cheat sheet for name-dropping in society. The trouble? Its books are imaginary.
A Northern freeman enslaved by Northern hands

Kidnappers of Color Versus the Cause of Antislavery

Thousands of free-born Black people in the North were kidnapped into slavery through networks that operated as a form of “Reverse Underground Railroad.”
Women strike for peace, picket march in front of state building in Los Angeles, 1961

HUAC versus Women Strike for Peace

American leftists were hamstrung by the Cold War’s domestic clampdown on communism, but in the 1960s, Women Strike for Peace re-wrote the book of dissent.
Reverend Edward E. Hailwood, rector of St. Mark Episcopal Church

Fair Housing: A Church Against Itself?

A ballot measure aimed at overturning California’s 1963 Fair Housing Act revealed some serious divisions within the Episcopal Church.
Welder-trainee Josie Lucille Owens plies her trade on the SS George Washington Carver at the Kaiser Shipyards in Richmond, CA, 1943

Toxic Legacies of WWII: Pollution and Segregation

Wartime production led directly to environmental and social injustices, polluting land and bodies in ways that continue to shape public policy and race relations.