Cotton Mather and other 17th-century American writers created a genre all their own: Puritan gallows literature, which both terrified and edified.

In eighteenth-century New England, funeral attendees went home with funeral tokens–usually a pair of gloves or a ring that declared their sorrow.

Initially, Indian slavery was considered different from African slavery in the early Anglo-American colonial world, but this split didn't last for long.

In colonial New England, moral quandaries were everywhere. A surprisingly big one in the 17th and 18th century was whether it was okay to wear a wig.

The connections between religiousness and authoritarianism, studied for decades, depend upon the kind of religious belief.

How American public schools came to be taxpayer-funded.