History Essays

A queer Black feminist debunks the myth of rainbow solidarity, repositioning Black and Latinx LGBTQ+ people at the forefront of queer pasts, presents, and futures Your favorite Black queer studies professor Kaila Adia Story says the rainbow ain’t never been enough in this introduction to the...

In 1831, Charles Darwin embarked on an expedition that, in his own words, determined my whole career. The Voyage of the Beagle chronicles his five-year journey around the world and especially the coastal waters of South America as a naturalist on the H.M.S. Beagle. While traveling through these...

In the spring of 1983 Terry Tempest Williams learned that her mother was dying of cancer. That same season, The Great Salt Lake began to rise to record heights, threatening the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge and the herons, owls, and snowy egrets that Williams, a poet and naturalist, had come to gauge her life by. One event was nature at its most random, the other a by-product of rogue technology: Terry's mother, and Terry herself, had been exposed to the fallout of atomic bomb tests in the 1950s.

Medical mistakes are more pervasive than we think. How can we improve outcomes? An acclaimed MD’s rich stories and research explore patient safety. Patients enter the medical system with faith that they will receive the best care possible, so when things go wrong, it’s a profound and painful...

From the best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of All Over but the Shoutin' and The Best Cook in the World, a collection of irresistible columns from Southern Living and Garden & Gun Celebrated author and newspaper columnist Rick Bragg brings us an ode to the stories and history of the...

Exposes the new generation of whiteness thriving at the expense and borrowed ingenuity of black people—and explores how this intensifies racial inequality. American culture loves blackness. From music and fashion to activism and language, black culture constantly achieves worldwide influence...

At this defining moment in our history, Americans are hungry for change. After years of failed policies and a failed politics from Washington, this is our chance to reclaim the American dream. Barack Obama has proven to be a new kind of leader—one who can bring people together, be honest about...

A fresh history of the West grounded in the lives of mixed-descent Native families who first bridged and then collided with racial boundaries. Often overlooked, there is mixed blood at the heart of America. And at the heart of Native life for centuries there were complex households using...

From the New York Times reporters who first uncovered S.S. officer Aribert Heim’s secret life in Egypt comes the never-before-told story of the most hunted Nazi war criminal in the world. Dr. Aribert Heim worked at the Mauthausen concentration camp for only a few months in 1941 but left a...

A vivid tour into the subterranean that encourages us to look downwards, revealing how the earth's most biodiverse frontier sustains all life above the soil surface The ground beneath us hums with a staggering abundance of winding roots, interconnecting fungal networks, wriggling creatures, and...

A sharp, funny examination of fame in the digital era and what makes our hunger for it equally alluring and embarrassing—from the podcasters behind Who? Weekly While being photographed in 1966, Warhol reportedly said, “Everyone wants to be famous.” (To which his photographer, Nat...

“One of the year’s must-reads.” –ELLE “[A] provocative, heart-breaking, and frequently hilarious collection.” –GLAMOUR “Essential, vital, and urgent.” –HARPER’S BAZAAR In the vein of Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist and Issa Rae’s The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, but...

A brilliant and brilliantly entertaining tour de force of American politics from one of journalism's most acclaimed commentators.History turns on a dime. A missed meeting, a different choice of words, and the outcome changes dramatically. Nowhere is this truer than in the field where Jeff...

The goals of the budo - the martial arts and ways of Japan - lie in refining the body and spirit. These goals are not always the obvious ones - and are learned only through the guidance and direction of great teachers. The techniques, methods, and rituals of the sensei can serve as guides to a well-lived life - and provide invaluable lessons for today's martial artists.

Travel thirty miles north, south, or east of San Francisco city hall and you'll be engulfed in a landscape of thick traffic, fast enterprise, and six-dollar cappuccinos. Venture thirty miles due west, however, and you will find yourself on what is virtually another planet: a spooky cluster of...

Deeply funny, moving, and urgent writing about a country that can feel broken into pieces and the light that shines through the cracks, from Irish comedian Maeve Higgins, author of Maeve in America. As an eternally curious outsider, Maeve Higgins can see that the United States is still an...

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NATIONAL BESTSELLER What would actually make America great: more people. If the most challenging crisis in living memory has shown us anything, it’s that America has lost the will and the means to lead. We can’t compete with the huge population clusters of the global marketplace by...

From the author of the sensational bestseller I Was Told There'd Be Cake comes a new book of personal essays brimming with all the charm and wit that have earned Sloane Crosley widespread acclaim, award nominations, and an ever-growing cadre of loyal fans. In Cake readers were introduced to the...

The acclaimed author of Einstein’s Dreams tackles "big questions like the origin of the universe and the nature of consciousness ... in an entertaining and easily digestible way” (Wall Street Journal) with a collection of meditative essays on the possibilities—and impossibilities—of...