Before Leo XIV, the weird, century-long history of Americans claiming to be pope.

Harlow Giles Unger is author of 27 books, including a dozen biographies of the Founding Fathers. His latest book is Thomas Paine and the Clarion Call for American Independence, published by Hachette.

Mr. Stern taught African American history at the college level for a decade before becoming historian at the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum (1977–1999)—where he designed the museum’s ...

Ms. Klein is a student of the JFK assassination whose researches have taken her to Dealey Plaza and the Texas School Book Depository on several occasions. Her latest article on the subject was ...

The belief that religious figures should be celibate began long before the birth of Christianity. Ancient Druid priests were thought to have been celibate and Aztec temple priests were expected to ...

Edwin Black is the author of "IBM and the Holocaust" and "War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race," from which the following article is drawn. Hitler and his ...

Alan J. Singer is a historian and professor of secondary education at Hofstra University, author of New York and Slavery: Time to Teach the Truth (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2008), and editor of the ...

W. J. Rorabaugh, professor of History at the University of Washington in Seattle, is the author of American Hippies (Cambridge University Press), which offers a brief overview of the Sixties ...

“There was once a dream that was Rome. You could only whisper it. Anything more than a whisper and it would vanish … it was so fragile.” So says the dying Emperor Marcus Aurelius at the ...

Richard R. John is a professor of history and communications at Columbia University, where he teaches courses in the history of communications and the history of capitalism. He is currently ...

Donald Yacovone is an Associate at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Studies, Harvard University and an Athenæum member. Oompa-Loompa illustration by Joseph Schindelman ...