Fifty years ago, a journalist-turned-futurist named Alvin Toffler published Future Shock, a treatise on life in the new Information Age that became one of 1970's biggest bestsellers. The book, along with Toffler's later works, earned him the admiration of tech leaders like AOL's Steve Case and...

What will we one day make of 2020? What can we make of it now? Attempts to provide on-the-spot historical analysis to inform this moment--something I and so many other historians now do on the regular--both feel urgently needed and hopelessly inadequate. Historians have stepped into the arena...

The New York City Marathon winds through all five boroughs, and the Bronx is the last one you hit. It comes around mile 20, the toughest point of the 26.2-mile distance, the “Wall” that everyone must scale to get to the finish line. The cheering crowds along First Avenue are a distant memory by...