Industrial plant releasing thick smoke into the sky.

Poisoned City: How Tacoma Became a Hotbed of Crime and Kidnapping in the 1920s

On the intersection of environmental contamination and violence in the Pacific Northwest.
‘Two girls at Bamberg led to the stake, 1550’; etching by Jan Luyken from the 1685 edition of Thieleman van Braght’s The Bloody Theater, or Martyrs Mirror of the Defenseless Christians.

Dispirited Away

The rise and fall of an evangelical church, founded with progressive intentions and undone by dissension and bad faith.
1928 painting of a girl getting baptized in a pool, surrounded by a crowd on a farm.

Trouble in River City

Two recent books examine the idea of the Midwest as a haven for white supremacy and patriarchy.
Photos of children from the cover of "The Crisis," 1916

‘Anxious for a Mayflower’

In "A Nation of Descendants," Francesca Morgan traces the American use and abuse of genealogy from the Daughters of the American Revolution to Roots.

On Robert Caro, Great Men, and the Problem of Powerful Women in Biography

Power and ambition in women are often hidden, buried, disguised, crushed, mocked, diminished, punished, or excoriated.

Yes, ‘Little House on the Prairie’ is Racially Insensitive — But We Should Still Read It

Librarians are once again raising concerns over the book’s depiction of Native Americans.

Laura Ingalls Wilder and One of the Greatest Natural Disasters in American History

When a trillion locusts ate everything in sight.