What do Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg have in common? They're both billionaires, and neither one has a college degree! Using the website, scholars explore whether having a college education is truly worth the money it costs. They read...

In 1692 a group of adolescent girls in Salem Village, Massachusetts, became subject to strange fits after hearing tales told by a West Indian slave. When they were questioned, they accused several women of being witches who were...

Religious tolerance was an important but often misunderstood contribution of the colonial era. Tolerance developed only after time. Groups such as the Pilgrims and Puritans who left Europe to escape religious persecution often were...

The 18th-century statesmen who met in Philadelphia were adherents of Montesquieu's concept of the balance of power in politics. This principle was supported by colonial experience and strengthened by the writings of John Locke, with...

The Asian population of Africa is a small but significant minority. Whereas there have been Asians, primarily merchants, who lived on the east coast of Africa for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, a great influx of Asians came to...

During the colonial period, the Pokot were called "Suk" by Europeans. To some Pokot, the older designation is a reminder of an era in which Africans lacked the power to name themselves; to others, it represents the clever ruse of a...

Most settlers who came to America in the 17th century were English, but there were also Dutch, Swedes and Germans in the middle region, a few French Huguenots in South Carolina and elsewhere, slaves from Africa, primarily in the South,...

For a variety of reasons, those who came to settle the early colonies sought a new homeland. Puritans, for example, established several settlements in Massachusetts. These English colonists were a pious, self-disciplined people who...

Although the colonial period produced several women writers of note, the revolutionary era did not further the work of women and minorities, despite the many schools, magazines, newspapers, and literary clubs that were springing up....