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Illustration of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and William James, and a cemetery.

‘Live All You Can’

The reflections of Emerson, Thoreau, and William James one finds a characteristically nineteenth-century American sense of resilience and regeneration.
by John Banville via New York Review of Books on February 15, 2024
A "political funeral" during the height of the HIV/AIDs epidemic.

The Right to Grieve

To demand the freedom to mourn—not on the employer’s schedule, but in our own time—is to reject the cruel rhythms of the capitalist status quo.
by Erik Baker via Jewish Currents on March 13, 2023
Black and white photo of Geronimo

How Grief and Revenge Made Geronimo Into a Legendary War Chief

Before Geronimo met any white Americans or came to think of them as enemies of the Apaches, he spent years fighting Mexicans.
by H. W. Brands via Literary Hub on November 8, 2022
Photograph of John Gunther, an American journalist.

The Book That Unleashed American Grief

John Gunther’s “Death Be Not Proud” defied a nation’s reluctance to describe personal loss.
by Deborah Cohen via The Atlantic on March 8, 2022
Mary Todd Lincoln posing with two of her young children

Mary Lincoln Wasn’t ‘Crazy.’ She Was a Bereaved Mother, New Exhibit Says.

The Lincolns had four sons. Mary buried three of them. A new exhibit at President Lincoln's Cottage sheds light on bereaved parents, then and now.
by Gillian Brockell via Washington Post on May 1, 2021

The School Shooting That Austin Forgot

In 1978, an eighth grader from a prominent Austin family killed his teacher. His classmates are still haunted by what happened that terrible day and after.
by Robert Draper via Texas Monthly on March 18, 2020
Photo of John Brown holding a flag and raising his right hand as if in oath.

A Hero in the Midst of Cowards

The righteous rage of John Brown.
by Jonathan Burdick via The Erie Reader on December 4, 2019

Joe Biden's Audacity of Grief

On the mournful threads connecting his half-century in politics.
by George Blaustein via The New Republic on May 16, 2019

History in the Face of Catastrophe

After my son died, how could I know anything for certain?
by Stéphane Gerson via The Chronicle of Higher Education on February 4, 2018
A contact sheet of portraits of James Baldwin, 1972.

For Those Who Would Be Real

James Baldwin’s testimony in images.
by Harmony Holiday via Harper’s on April 29, 2025
Children at the Oakland Community School, 1973.

What Happens When the U.S. Declares War on Your Parents?

The Black Panthers shook America before the party was gutted by the government. Their children paid a steep price, but also emerged with unassailable pride.
by Ed Pilkington via The Guardian on March 25, 2025

Infectious Diseases Killed Victorian Children at Alarming Rates. Novels Show the Fragility of Health

Between 40% and 50% of children didn’t live past 5 in the US during the 19th century. Authors documented the common but no less gutting grief of losing a child.
by Andrea Kaston Tange via The Conversation on December 11, 2024
A copy of "On Death and Dying" with a magnifying glass in front of it.

Lost in the Five Stages of Grief

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s “On Death and Dying” sparked a revolution in end-of-life care. But soon she began to deny mortality altogether.
by Colin Dickey via The New Republic on April 24, 2024
Alice Coltrane

The Visions of Alice Coltrane

In the years after her husband John’s death, the harpist discovered a sound all her own, a jazz rooted in acts of spirit and will.
by Marcus J. Moore via The Nation on March 21, 2024
Rose Mackenberg.

The Ghost-Busting 'Girl Detective' Who Awed Houdini

As an undercover investigator, Rose Mackenberg unmasked hundreds of America’s fake psychics.
by Nina Strochlic via Atlas Obscura on March 14, 2024
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Glad to the Brink of Fear

A new biography reveals how Ralph Waldo Emerson gave Americans a vocabulary to understand themselves in an era even more tempestuous than our own.
by Nicole Penn via American Purpose on March 13, 2024
Two elderly Black women.

How the Memory of a Song Reunited Two Women Separated by the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

In 1990, scholars found a Sierra Leonean woman who remembered a nearly identical version of a tune passed down by a Georgia woman’s enslaved ancestors
by Joshua Kagavi via Smithsonian on February 29, 2024
The Fulton Fish Market.

When Your Childhood Belongs to Everyone: Growing Up in a Manhattan That Changed Forever on 9/11

Loft life above the Fulton Fish Market and the day that everything changed.
by Emma Dries via Literary Hub on February 22, 2024
Books "Three Roads Back" and "Henry David Thoreau."

To Walden

Two new books attempt to grasp Thoreau’s seeming contradictions without reconciling them too easily.
by Todd Shy via Los Angeles Review of Books on November 7, 2023
A lithograph depicting the burning of copies of William Pynchon’s 'The Meritous Price of Our Redemption' by early colonists of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, who saw his book as heresy.

He Wasn’t Like the Other New England “Witches.” His Story Explains a Lot.

The little-told tale of the 1651 trial of Hugh and Mary Parsons.
by Colin Dickey via Slate on October 31, 2022
Photograph of woman in black mourning clothes and pearls

The Elitist History of Wearing Black to Funerals

Today, mourning attire is subdued and dutiful. It wasn’t always that way.
by Katie Thornton via The Atlantic on September 26, 2022

The Country That Could Not Mourn

The Covid-19 pandemic has shown just how hard it is for Americans to grieve.
by Sarah Jaffe via The New Republic on September 23, 2022
Black and white lithograph drawing of a white man dragging away a Black woman as another white man holds her baby.

Maternal Grief in Black and White

Examining enslaved mothers and antislavery literature on the eve of war.
by Cassandra Berman via Nursing Clio on September 22, 2022
Collage of drawings of various people and objects, including Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd Lincoln.

Throngs of Unseen People

A new history of spiritualism during the Civil War era suggests an unexpected link between the Lincoln family and that of John Wilkes Booth.
by David S. Reynolds via New York Review of Books on September 15, 2022
T. rex jaws, lower left, 1909–30. Photographer unknown. Image No. 17533, AMNH Library.

He Was an All-Time Genius at Finding Tyrannosaurus Rexes. His Story Will Break Your Heart.

Why Barnum Brown could not stop collecting.
by David K. Randall via Slate on July 4, 2022
Portrait of Medgar Evers.

The Day The Civil-Rights Movement Changed

What my father saw in Mississippi.
by David Dennis Jr. via The Atlantic on May 4, 2022
Pen sketch of Robert Frost.

Frost at Midnight

A new volume of Robert Frost’s letters finds him at the height of his artistic powers while suffering an almost unimaginable series of losses.
by Dan Chiasson via New York Review of Books on November 24, 2021
Black mother holding baby

The Persistent Joy of Black Mothers

Characterized throughout American history as symbols of crisis, trauma, and grief, these women reject those narratives through world-making of their own.
by Leah Wright Rigueur via The Atlantic on August 11, 2021
Barn where Emmett Till was killed

His Name Was Emmett Till

In 1955, just past daybreak, a Chevrolet truck pulled up to an unmarked building. A 14-year-old child was in the back.
by Wright Thompson via The Atlantic on July 22, 2021
Two women holding camphor, which is on a string around their necks

Flu, 1918

Remembering a year of hell and devastation—the year of the Spanish flu.
by Rose Riegelhaupt via Jewish Currents on June 14, 2021
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