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...

It is April 19, six weeks into life, upended. In the last few years I often longed for a pause button on the world: a moment when everything would slow down and I could catch up, finish that piece of writing, read that book, get more sleep. Now I have that gotten that world on hold, and for awful...