The Triumphalism of American Wild West Shows
From the 1880s to the 1930s, hundreds of Wild West shows encouraged white audiences to view Native American culture as a rapidly vanishing curiosity.
American Daredevils
The nineteenth-century commitment to thrilling an audience embodied an emerging synergy of public performance, collective experience, and individual agency.
Cold War Flames on US Soil: The Oakdale Prison Riot
In the 1980s, Cold War tensions led to thousands of Cubans languishing in American prisons, unable to be released or repatriated. Uprisings followed.
Guns in America: Foundations and Key Concepts
This non-exhaustive list of readings on the role of guns in US history and society introduces the field as a subject of scholarly inquiry.
Choosing Love over Eugenics
Some writers see contagion as a metaphor for community—proof that we exist within an interdependent network and not as autonomous disconnected islands.
Revisiting Reconstruction
Reconstruction is one of the least-known periods of American history, and much of what people think they know about it may be wrong.
How Marketing Made L.A.
In the early 20th century, the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce started marketing L.A as an earthquake-free alternative to San Francisco.
The Devastation of Black Wall Street
Tulsa, Oklahoma. 1921. A wave of racial violence destroys an affluent African-American community, seen as a threat to white-dominated American capitalism.
St. Francis Square: How a Union Built Integrated, Affordable Housing in San Francisco
How a union built integrated affordable housing in early 1960s San Francisco.
Forgetting Abraham Lincoln
Sarah Browne’s neglect of Lincoln, compared with the ceaseless remembrance of her daughter, did not lessen her desolation over the assassination.