Features

Long-form articles by historians

Showing 121 - 144 of 207
A sign that reads, "Keep Govment out of Medicade Dammit!"
An Enemy Until You Need A Friend: The Role of "Big Government" in American History
Football player Takeo Spikes compared the violence of football to the Roman coliseum.
Savage Gladiators vs. Civilized Amateurs: Rome and Athens in American Sports Culture
For centuries, baptisms have been performed in the Jordan River, considered holy by many religious communities. A baptism taking place in the Jordan River.
Baptized in the Jordan: Restoring a Holy River
Rainbow flag.
The Road to Same-Sex Marriage: Lesbian Mothers, Gay Fathers, and the American Family
Anti-Morsi poster in Egypt.
Clampdown and Blowback: How State Repression Has Radicalized Islamist Groups in Egypt
First Lady Nancy Reagan expresses her feelings about drugs while riding horses with her husband, President Ronald Reagan.
The Illegalization of Marijuana: A Brief History
Overlooking Euromaidan in Kyiv, Ukraine.
The Ukrainian Crisis: In Russia's Long Shadow
Flag of Pakistan.
A Fresh Start for Pakistan?
Putin Sochi Olympics Gay Rights
Russia, Gay Rights, and the Sochi Olympics
President Warring G. Harding at Walter Reed Hospital in March of 1921.
People Were Skeptical about Veterans’ Hospitals, Too: The Affordable Care Act and Health Policy Precedents
This image depicts Ali, a Jesus-like figure in Alawite theology.
Alawites and the Fate of Syria
The futuristic National Security Operations Center occupies a floor of the National Security Agency's headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland.
America's "Big Brother": A Century of U.S. Domestic Surveillance
Trayvon Martin was on the cover of People magazine in 2012.
Justice Denied: The Killing of Trayvon Martin in Historical Perspective
Iranian postage stamp commemorating the shooting down of Iran Air 655 in 1988.
Viewpoint Iran: The Past and Present of the U.S.-Iran Standoff
Euro coins.
European Disunion: The Rise and Fall of a Post-War Dream?
Predator drone.
Aerial Torpedoes, Buzz Bombs, and Predators: The Long Cultural History of Drones
The GOP elephant and the Democratic Party's donkey.
Breaking Up Is Hard to Do: America's Love Affair with the Two-Party System
Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio becomes Pope Francis in March 2013.
Two Popes and a Primate: The Changing Face of Global Christianity
A rendering of the Grand Renaissance Dam.
Who Owns the Nile? Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia’s History-Changing Dam
This Cold War-era poster carries the slogan 'Chairman Mao is the great savior of the revolutionary peoples of the world' and an illustration of African freedom fighters reading a copy of Mao's little book of quotations.
A New World Order? Africa and China
1996 suicide bombing in Jerusalem.
The Human Use of Human Beings: A Brief History of Suicide Bombing
Elderly Mennonite couple in Pennsylvania.
Should Age Matter? How 65 Came to Be Old and Old Came to Be Ill
The Great Dome at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Democratizing American Higher Education: The Legacy of the Morrill Land Grant Act
This detail from an early-20th-century image over the entrance to an arms factory in Belgium depicts a European arms manufacturer selling a gun to a darker-skinned purchaser in an exotic setting.
"Merchants of Death": The International Traffic in Arms