In 18th century Paris, policemen accepted that property could take the form of people.

History News Network puts current events into historical perspective. Subscribe to our newsletter for new perspectives on the ways history continues to resonate in the present. Explore our archive of ...

Considering a novel as a whole, rather than as the sum of its parts, was an approach favored by mid-20th-century literary critics. It was also useful for fighting book bans.

History News Network puts current events into historical perspective. Subscribe to our newsletter for new perspectives on the ways history continues to resonate in the present. Explore our archive of ...

In Memoirs of a Nobody, Henry Boernstein chronicles the militant immigrant organizing that helped keep St. Louis out of the hands of the Confederacy.

The past and present of counterfactual history, from antiquity to the Napoleonic Wars to a few very active subreddits.

What the history of the pocket calculator reveals about the future of AI in classrooms.

We know how to euthanize beloved pets — veterinarians do it every day. And we know how physician-assisted suicide works — it is legal in several states. If drugs can be used to humanely end life in ...

One of the challenging debates, for economists and policymakers as much as historians, is about how to define efficiency. One of its most standard applications to policy and law is cost-benefit ...

Julie Greene is professor of history at the University of Maryland, College Park. Workers at the Panama Canal, 1913. Photograph by Harris & Ewing. [Library of Congress] A young man named Edgar ...