It took three more decades of Soviet rule before the archives dealing with Stalin and his times could be explored. And then the doors were shut again.

In The Miscellany of Iskandar Sultan, sections of text stack on top of one another, interlaced like fretwork. Bursts of flowers and tangles of vines fill the empty spaces.

The Thames Tunnel, the world's first underwater tunnel, is still in use 175 years after its long-delayed opening, but you can't shop there anymore.

Stories emerged in the centuries after Alexander the Great’s death. They revolved around Alexander's failures, not his victories. The portrait that emerges is strangely poignant.

Russian serfdom and American slavery ended within two years of each other; the defenders of these systems of bondage surprisingly shared many of the same arguments.

Scholar Elaine Freedgood tells the story of how, in the face of encroaching industrialism, handmade lace enjoyed a frilly revival.

The Tet Offensive of January 1968 has been much studied from the American perspective, but what did the North Vietnamese think about it?

The French writer Chateaubriand made up or copied a great deal of what he wrote about the early United States. What he said had tremendous influence.

How do identity politics work in extremis? The resistance in the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising had to both suppress and amplify their Jewishness.

Tea is bound up in the nation's history of colonial expansion. British tea drinkers preferred Chinese tea at first, and had to be convinced on patriotic grounds to drink tea from India.