Presented as part of the special Politics Issue

Whatever the first amendment may say about the separation of church and state, religion has had a place in American politics, for better or worse, since the very founding of the nation.

Presented as part of the special Politics Issue
Whether in fact Douglas was a scoundrel
had become the key issue in American politics
in 1858…

“Impracticable the electoral college surely is. And it is precisely because of its improbable construction that today’s electoral college remains one of the least altered institutions established by the Constitution of 1787. . .”

2016 will mark not just the election of the forty-fifth president of the United States, but also the 200th anniversary of the creation of the first ever lobbying agency in the national capital, an agency that was founded by a Delaware factory manager named Isaac Briggs.

Presented as part of the special issue “Early Cities of the Americas.”

“For most of the twentieth century, the actual year of the founding of Santa Fe was a matter of historical speculation, and the name of its founder, Juan Martinez de Montoya, has only recently been accepted by scholars.”

Presented as part of the special issue “Early Cities of the Americas.”

“Tenochtitlan’s precarious, dynamic order was held together by a passionate devotion to religion and the discharging of the Aztecs’ special and ever-expanding obligation to the gods.”

Presented as part of the special Politics Issue

There is a romantic notion that this American expansion was achieved by settlers unaided by government—the rugged frontiersmen of the mythic West. In reality, however, the United States expanded through state action.

In the years that followed the annexation, plans for the next North American grab (or purchase) of Mexican lands became a regular topic of debate on the pages of U.S. newspapers.

In this era of click-bait headlines and little time to settle in with a complicated and nuanced book (not to mention pressures to publish), categories offer a quick way to make sense of complex phenomena. 

Presented as part of the Special Literature Issue

Leonora Sansay’s Secret History illuminates the early republic’s “unknown known”—its political unconscious—with incredible precision.