Black aristocracy is being spotlighted in HBO's "The Gilded Age" but there is more to the story than the The Scott family's plot. Groups of enterprising Black people began to use their newfound ...

New York Times subscribers* enjoy full access to TimesMachine—view over 150 years of New York Times journalism, as it originally appeared. *Does not include Games-only or Cooking-only subscribers.

One of my best friends who I am committed to meet fortnightly for our mutual discussions and conversations on national and international matters asked me an interesting question during our last ...

In 2008, the French critic Lucien Jaume published an interpretation of Alexis de Tocqueville that won a prize from the Académie Française. An English version by the eminent translator Arthur ...

We pride ourselves on having abolished the hereditary privileges once associated with aristocracy. But our citizenship system replicates many of the same evils. A US passport. The privileges ...

Central to the generations-long narrative of American greatness is the United States' willingness to allow raw talent to thrive unimpeded by artificial constraints. This idea that the best of us have ...