Rope’s Role in Colonial America’s Tarring and Feathering

by Tim Queeney Tim Queeney, author of Rope: How a Bundle of Twisted Fibers Became the Backbone of Civilization, shares with The History Reader how rope played a pivotal role in Colonial America’s acts of tarring and feathering before it fell into gradual disuse in the...

Richard Nixon’s Call for a Cosmic Hoedown

by Jeffrey Kluger Few authors have had as big an impact on space journalism as Jeffrey Kluger. His book Lost Moon, co-authored with Astronaut James Lovell, was the basis for Tom Hanks’s movie, Apollo 13. In honor of the anniversary of Apollo 11 landing on the moon on...

To Look Them in the Face: Bunker Hill 250

by Jack Kelly As part of the ongoing celebration of the birth of the United States 250 years ago and the sacrifices that soldiers made to create the United States, author Jack Kelly recounts the Battle of Bunker Hill and Dr. Joseph Warren’s role in it. Portrait of...
What Can We Learn from Red Dead Redemption?

What Can We Learn from Red Dead Redemption?

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Black Activism & the Jazz Age

This piece is a response to our Call for Submissions: Histories of Political Protest in the U.S. For our submission guidelines, click here. While the literary figures of the Harlem Renaissance are correctly celebrated as intellectuals and activists, jazz musicians of...

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Resisting the Lonely Historian

I long imagined writing as a lonely endeavor. My vision was of an individual bent over a notebook, solitary in some winged armchair, in a room quiet save for the gasps of a dying fire. As an undergraduate, I found friends who shared my habits of pouring over fantasy...

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Pat Nixon and “Panda Diplomacy”

Pat Nixon and “Panda Diplomacy”

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The Peculiar World of American Sheriffs

I didn’t set out to write about sheriffs. I was working on a history of a 1933 murder that began with the beating, robbery, and death of a white shopkeeper in the tiny town of Pompano in Broward County, Florida, and ended with the 1940 United States Supreme Court...

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Uncovering Stories in Small Archives

Uncovering Stories in Small Archives

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Butch Gets Busted

Butch Gets Busted

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Adventure, Shipwrecks, and the History of the World

Adventure, Shipwrecks, and the History of the World

David Gibbins’s day job is anything but normal. Gibbins has worked in underwater archaeology all his professional life and is currently a world authority on ancient shipwrecks and sunken cities. He has led numerous expeditions to investigate underwater sites in the...

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John Colter: The First Mountain Man?

John Colter: The First Mountain Man?

One of the joys of researching and writing (with Bob Drury) Throne of Grace was discovering the crucial role mountain men played in America’s westward expansion. They were the tip of the spear of the migration of mostly white people of European descent into the...

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Army Rangers on D-Day

Army Rangers on D-Day

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The Legendary Doolittle Raid Over Tokyo

The Legendary Doolittle Raid Over Tokyo

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The Way to Santa Fe

The Way to Santa Fe

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Tracking Jedediah Smith

Tracking Jedediah Smith

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