“Is It Possible to Have a ‘Positive Collapse’?” (review of Eric H. Cline’s After 1177 B.C.), Slate, April 28, 2024

“Americans Have Enjoyed Imagining Civil War for a Long, Long Time” (review of Alex Garland’s Civil War), Slate, April 11, 2024

Review of Amitava Kumar’s My Beloved Life, Chronogram, Feb. 1, 2024

“The Conquered General” (review of Elizabeth Varon’s Longstreet), Slate, Nov. 20, 2023

“The Battle Over the Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail,” Chronogram, Oct. 27, 2023

“How Thomas Smallwood helped hundreds of enslaved people find freedom” (review of Scott Shane’s Flee North), The Washington Post, Sept. 8, 2023

“The great American crackup: Roe’s reversal would speed America’s race to disunion,” New York Daily News, May 8, 2022

“Biographical Fallacy” (review of James Traub’s Judah Benjamin), Jewish Currents, Feb. 3, 2022

“Imagining a ‘Second Civil War’ Is a Lost Cause” (review of Stephen Marche’s The Next Civil War), Slate, Jan. 17, 2022

“Did the Constitution Pave the Way to Emancipation?” (review of James Oakes’ The Crooked Path to Abolition), The Nation, Oct. 6, 2021

“The Unreconstructed Radical” (review of Bruce Levine’s Thaddeus Stevens), The Baffler (May 13, 2021)

“Why It’s Time to Take Secessionism Seriously,” The New York Review of Books (Jan. 19, 2021)

“Now Is Not the Time for Unity,” The Nation (Jan. 15, 2021)

“Thank the Pilgrims for America’s Tradition of Separatism, Division, and Infighting,” Zócalo Public Square (November 25, 2020)

“American Democracy Was Never Supposed to Work,” The Nation (November 17, 2020)

“What History Tells Us About Trump’s Implosion and Biden’s Opportunity” (interview with Stephen Skowonek), The Nation (October 12, 2020)

“Trump keeps hinting he may reject the election results. Is his true goal an immunity deal?” USA Today (October 1, 2020)

“The Election From Our Past That Blares a Warning For 2020,” The Washington Post (September 11, 2020)

“Americans Have Feared Another Civil War Since the End of the Last One,” History News Network (September 10, 2020)

“A Brief History of Dangerous Others” (written with Rick Perlstein), The New York Review of Books (July 27, 2020)

“Tear Down This Statue,” The Baffler (July 6, 2020)

“The Confederates Loved America, and They’re Still Defining What Patriotism Means,” The New Republic (June 30, 2020)

“A More Perfect Kind of Union?” The New York Times (April 24, 2020)

“When Confronting the Coronavirus, Federalism Is Part of the Problem,” The Nation (April 1, 2020)

“Resistance By Refusal: You’re Never Too Legit to Quit” (interview with Jennet Kirkpatrick), The Nation (January 2, 2018)

“A New York Constitutional Convention Would Be Good for Democracy,” The Nation (November 3, 2017)

“The US Constitution Is Over 2 Centuries Old and Showing Its Age,” The Nation (November 2, 2017)

“‘We Have Not a Government’: The US Before the Constitution” (interview with George William Van Cleve), The Nation (October 23, 2017)

“Empire, Conquest, and the War America Forgot” (interview with William Hogeland), The Nation (May 15, 2017)

“Trump Is Just Tearing Off the Mask” (interview with Eric Foner), The Nation (April 18, 2017)

“Forget the Musical—Alexander Hamilton’s Real Legacy is the Poverty-Stricken City He Founded,” The Nation (February 21, 2017)

“Are We on the Verge of Another Civil War?” (interview with David Armitage), The Nation (February 8, 2017)

“What Time Is It?: Here’s What the 2016 Election Tells Us About Obama, Trump, and What Comes Next” (interview with Stephen Skowronek), The Nation (November 22, 2016)

“When the North Almost Seceded,” The Boston Globe (October 28, 2016)

“Jefferson: Hero or Villain? It’s Complicated” (interview with Annette Gordon-Reed and Peter S. Onuf), Boston Review, June 7, 2016

“Let’s Not Forget Socialism in the Resurrection of Socialist Art,” The Nation (May 12, 2016)

“Will the Los Angeles River Become a Playground for the Rich?” The Nation (March 10, 2016)

“Hillary Clinton and the Anti-Democratic Origins of American Politics,” The Nation (February 8, 2016)

“Humans of the Iowa Caucus” (with Thomas Bollier), The Nation (February 1, 2016)

“Do We Need a New Constitutional Convention?” (interview with Sanford Levinson), Boston Review (December 29, 2015)

“A Tale of Two Citations,” The Baffler (December 15, 2015)

“The Constitution Requires Inequality,” The Boston Globe (December 13, 2015)

“Henry James, Photography, and New York,” Raritan (Fall 2015)

“Stereoscopes Could Change How We See the World—Again,” The Boston Globe (August 16, 2015)

“The Obsessively Detailed Map of American Literature’s Most Epic Road Trips,” Atlas Obscura (July 20, 2015)

“The Blue and the Gray Zone,” The Baffler (July 2015)

“A Road Trip That Predates Cars,” The Boston Globe (May 31, 2015)

“Vigilance: On the Underground Railroad” (review of Eric Foner’s Gateway to Freedom), The Nation (May 11, 2015)

“The Echoes of Walt Whitman’s Drum-Taps,” The Boston Globe (April 19, 2015)

“The Powerful Example of the Jewish Abolitionists,” The Forward (January 30, 2015)

“This Long-Lost Constitutional Clause Could Save the Right to Vote,” The Nation (January 21, 2015)

“On the Centennial of The New Republic,” The Nation (November 24, 2014)

“Burning Down the House” (review of two books on the Chelsea Hotel), The Nation (July 7, 2014)

“Tammany Kindness” (review of Terry Golway’s Machine Made), Public Books (June 1, 2014)

“Should Voters Decide If We Go To War?” Salon (September 21, 2013)

“Oxford Town, Red Hook, and Every Other Place Bob Dylan’s Sung About, Mapped” (with Thomas Bollier), Slate (May 24, 2013)

“The Sons of Revolution and Steerage: On Franklin Roosevelt and Fiorello La Guardia” (review of Mason Williams’ City of Ambition), The Nation (May 6, 2013)

“First We Stake Manhattan: On the New York City Grid Plan” (review of Marguerite Holloway’s The Measure of Manhattan), Slate (April 5, 2013)

“My Lai Rules” (review of Nick Turse’s Kill Anything That Moves), The Nation (February 13, 2013)

“‘Lincoln,’ Thaddeus Stevens, and Why American Politics Still Needs Radicals,” The Nation (December 10, 2012)

“Hunting Covered Bridges in the Quebec Countryside,” The Montreal Review (September 2011)