History

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Is everything we know about American history wrong?
Forget the Pilgrims. America's roots are older and more twisted, what Tony Horwitz calls a "primordial slime of false starts and mutations."
Flagging America's racial divide
An infamous 1976 photo captured a violent encounter between white Bostonians and a black lawyer during an anti-busing rally. A new book explains why this image continues to haunt and define us.
Through a bong, darkly
A new book argues that the '60s counterculture achieved nothing of lasting importance. So why does the era continue to fascinate us?
A 1930s history lesson
Protectionism on the rise, bickering about exchange rates, the debilitating costs of war -- where have we heard this story before?
War goes graphic
"Age of Bronze," a masterly graphic novel series about the Trojan War, is fit for the gods.
America closes the book on intelligence
Our country is barely smarter than a fifth grader -- no wonder it's drowning in religious fundamentalism and political ideologues on both sides, argues Susan Jacoby.
The big secret about secret societies
Step right up, folks, and read the one true guide to Western and Eastern esoteric societies from the Freemasons to the Rosicrucians. Relics, totems and secret handshakes revealed!
Trapped in the grid
Like electricity, the Web is everywhere and changes everything, says Nicholas Carr. But the one thing it can't deliver is freedom.
Dirty, sexy opera
In Germany, Wagner is worshiped like a god. His scheming, squabbling descendants are another story.
Everything you know about absinthe is wrong
Banned for a century for inspiring madness and murder, absinthe is legal again. So pour yourself a glass and get to know the real Green Fairy.
America's first Me Generation
Did Emerson and the American transcendentalists transform society or merely sow the seeds of American individualism?
War and peace and trade
A history of world trade over the last millennium in one sentence.
Salon Book Awards 2007
From an imaginary history of Alaskan Jews to a compelling glimpse of the CIA, we pick the 10 most pleasurable reading experiences of the year.
The filthy, stinking truth
The messy history of cleanliness, and why our obsession with dirt may be making us sick.
American empire, going, going ...
Great empires were extraordinarily pluralistic, argues Amy Chua, until they frayed into xenophobia and decline. Can the U.S. steer another course?
For the birds?
While bird-watching is more popular than ever, competitive "listers" may not see how birds live, or that their habitat is disappearing.
Arthur M. Schlesinger's playbill for the American century
His personal journals unveil the glory and corruption of postwar presidents with emotional truth and power. Alas, the age of the great historian is over.
Divine politics
In "The Stillborn God," a history of the separation of church and state, Mark Lilla urges the West to remember the religious fanaticism in its past -- or risk its return.
The Mormons are coming
Long before Mitt Romney and "Big Love," Mormons were demonized as polygamists, prudes and vampires. But Mormonism just may be the first major world faith since Islam.
Bush's stairway to paradise
Hoping that history will somehow vindicate him, the president has entered a phase of decadent perversity.
America's great white hope
Whales play a romantic role in our national mythology, but they also helped transform a young colony into a world power.
Blood and bile and phlegm, oh my!
Before germ theory, humoral medicine -- based on magical thinking and ignorant of human anatomy -- dominated for 2,000 years. So why are today's doctors guided by some surprisingly similar principles?
What was so great about Catherine?
The Russian empress remains fascinating not because she attempted sex with a horse, but for expanding her empire, squashing her enemies and acting like, well, a man.
Herbivore vs. carnivore
Are vegetarians the moral, peace-loving, cruelty-free enemies of the meat eater? Or a bunch of kooks living in la-la land?
Ode to joy
Barbara Ehrenreich turns away from pop sociology to explore the historical oppression of collective happiness in "Dancing in the Streets."
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