Highway being built in Louisiana

What It Looks Like to Reconnect Black Communities Torn Apart by Highways

Take any major American city and you’re likely to find a historically Black neighborhood demolished, or cut off from the rest of the city by a highway.
Illustration of Native Americans on horseback attacking a mail coach

How the U.S. Postal Service Forever Changed the West

A new book argues that mail service played a critical role in the U.S. government’s westward expansion and occupation of Native lands.
A mural of a woman cleaning a turnstile.

How to Remember a Plague

2020 was full of efforts to archive photos and artifacts of the pandemic — an impulse born of a sense of witnessing history, and a desire to speak to the future.

Here Come the Cul-de-Sacs

Satellite images dating back to 1975 allow researchers to map how millions of cul-de-sacs and dead-ends have proliferated in street networks worldwide.

How the Battle for Sunlight Shaped New York City

As the city reached for the sky, those down below had to scramble for daylight.

How Women Mapped the Upheaval of 19th Century America

The second part in a series exploring little-seen contributions to cartography.

So Long, Shaker Pint: The Rise and Fall of America's Awful Beer Glass

How the entire U.S. came to drink out of a vessel never meant for human lips.