History

As a crusading attorney general, Eliot Spitzer made powerful enemies -- before a sex scandal ended his political career. Filmmaker Alex Gibney explores the many adversaries Spitzer made on Wall Street in Client 9, a new documentary about the former governor's downfall.

Vanity Fair political writer Todd Purdum walks us through what the new Republican House majority means for Congress and the White House -- and explores why presumptive House Speaker John Boehner might have an even tougher fight ahead.

After the housing bust, banks hired many people to handle foreclosure paperwork -- and many mistakes were made. New York Times columnist Gretchen Morgenson explains what the paperwork mess means for the banking industry and the economy.

In the Oct. 18 issue of The New Yorker, historian Sean Wilentz argues that the rhetoric expressed by both Glenn Beck and the Tea Party is nothing new -- and is rooted in an extremist ideology that has been around since the Cold War.

Abraham Lincoln always thought slavery was unjust — but struggled with what to do once slavery ended. Historian Eric Foner traces how Lincoln's thoughts about slavery — and freed slaves — mirrored America's own transformation in The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery.

Economist Robert Reich argues that the economy isn't going to get moving again until we address a fundamental problem: the growing concentration of wealth and income among the richest Americans. He explains his fears for America's economic recovery in Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future.

HBO's Boardwalk Empire, set in Atlantic City in the 1920s, is about organized crime in the era of Prohibition. Series creator Terence Winter, an Emmy Award-winning writer for The Sopranos, details his enduring fascination with New Jersey gangsters.

A house located on C Street in Washington, D.C., is home to many powerful conservative members of Congress who share both an ideology and an address. Jeff Sharlet details the house's mission in C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy.

Now that President Obama has declared the end of America's combat mission in Iraq, questions remain about the country's stability. New York Times foreign correspondent Anthony Shadid explains what the war means for the future of Iraq and the future of the Middle East.

The documentary Catfish may not be on the up-and-up. But does it matter? David Edelstein says no. Catfish, he says, provides a "true sense of adventure" and conveys emotions that "run the gamut from anxiety to contempt to curiosity to compassion."

Filmmaker Lixin Fan's Last Train Home documents the journey 130 million migrant workers make back to their rural villages every Chinese New Year. But the movie is not only about families traveling home -- it's about China's modernization. Critic John Powers says the images in the "epic and intimate" movie are absolutely ravishing."

More than 6 million African-Americans moved from the South to cities in the Northeast and Midwest between 1915 and 1970. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson documents the resulting demographic and social changes in her history of the Great Migration, The Warmth of Other Suns.

A new HBO documentary details Wright's experiences writing his Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Looming Tower. Wright explains what he learned while interviewing sources for his book -- and talks about the challenge maintaining objectivity while researching modern terrorism.

Chances are you've never heard of Charles and David Koch. The brothers, worth billions, are major industrialists and generous philanthropists. But in Washington, as Jane Mayer writes in the Aug. 30 New Yorker, they're "best known as part of a family that has repeatedly funded stealth attacks on the federal government, and on the Obama administration in particular."

This week marks the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's landfall in the Gulf region, devastating the area and leading to levee breaches that flooded most of New Orleans. TV critic David Bianculli says that television was all over the story then -- and five years later, is all over it again now.

In a new memoir, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Natasha Trethewey revisits her own memories of the Gulf Coast region, and details how members of her family worked to rebuild their lives after the storm. She asks how the identity of the Gulf will be remembered — and how the region's stories will be told.

Writer Sue Diaz was surprised when her son Roman told her that he was joining the Army. She writes about the emotional roller coaster her family experienced when her son left for war — and how her relationship with Roman changed — in Minefields of the Heart.

During the summer of 1896, a 10-day heat wave killed nearly 1,500 people across New York City — many of them tenement-dwellers. In Hot Time in the Old Town, historian Ed Kohn describes the disaster — and how a little-known police commissioner named Theodore Roosevelt championed the efforts to help New Yorkers survive the heat.

The historian and author died Friday from complications of Lou Gehrig's disease. Judt discussed his diagnosis on Fresh Air in March 2010, explaining what he'd learned living with ALS -- and how he hoped his family would remember him.

Jonathan Eig's new book Get Capone reveals new insights about the famous Chicago gangster — including how freely he spoke to reporters, the time he shot himself in the groin, and how venereal disease eventually robbed him of his health and sanity.