Italian historian Carlo Vecce set out to debunk rumors of da Vinci’s foreign origins, but a newly discovered document changed his mind

Rescuing peasants under Nazi occupation from the condescension of history

A pioneering Romanian Jewish lexicographer finds out that his mastery of language isn’t enough to make him a citizen

Contrary to Stanisław Żaryn’s excuses, no reputable historian believes that ‘the Polish nation’ was responsible for Nazi German crimes in Poland. Which is why the Polish government should leave the writing of history to historians.

Martin Van Buren created the machinery of mass political parties in America, opening the way for ordinary people to be heard—until so-called ‘reformers’ weakened the parties, inadvertently creating today’s plutocratic politics

America is now ruled by a single elite class rather than by local patrician smart sets competing with each other for money and power

The dream of a utopia administered by technocrats

How Social Gospel became Social Justice

A seemingly socially conscious corporate America is not a new phenomenon. It’s a revival of an old one.

New editions of the enduring scholarly work of Philipp Jaffé, the Polish Jew who was a groundbreaking German medievalist

What Natalie Zemon Davis, pioneering scholar of early modern Europe, owes to her husband, and Martin Guerre

Why Holocaust accounts—and their fictions or omissions—can be a threat to the history of a complicated, tragic human reality

Two new books explore the complex legacy and rich life of the great Jewish historian of conversos and Marranos

A new book sheds light on the complicated conflicts among Jews, Christians, and pagans in the pre-Islamic Middle East

What’s the best way to make history come alive? One guide’s answer: stories.