Livia Gershon

Scholars don't typically pay that much attention to smells, but odors have historically been quite significant.

At the turn of the century, Chicago police killed 307 people, one in eighteen homicides in the city—three times the body count of local gangsters.

In the late 19th century, more women were becoming librarians. Experts predicted they would suffer ill health and breakdowns.

Growth is only worth something if it makes people feel good.

Whether we consider the sounds of nature to be pleasant or menacing depends largely on our ideologies.

Why did David Clark campaign to keep kids working in the early 20th century? For one thing, it benefited his interests.

A historian looked at the consumer movements of the 1930s to find out.

Sunday school was a major part of nineteenth century reformers’ efforts to improve children’s lives and morals.

A 1942 glossary documents the origins of terms like "punk," "haywire," and "skidroad."

For most of American history, Washington's Birthday was a really big deal, but that’s changed a lot since the middle of the twentieth century.

Black Muslims have been an influential force in the prisoners' rights movement and criminal justice reform.

How today's media landscape was shaped by a 1920s decision to privilege corporate broadcasters over noncommercial ones.

How did truckers nudge the American economy toward deregulation?

The lasting influence of "How to Cook and Eat in Chinese."

To shave or not to shave? At the start of the twentieth century, a trend away from facial hair reflected dramatic social and economic shifts.

In an economy based on doing business with strangers, monitoring people's trustworthiness quickly became very profitable.

White supremacists have long used fear of losing essential rights in their arguments.

In the 1960s, there was no grand vision behind the idea of a middle school. The problem that the model sought to solve was segregation.

We often forget that Nixon took decidely liberal stances on welfare, healthcare, and universal basic income.

In the 1940s and 50s, a life of business travel represented a sense of freedom for gay men that would have been impossible in earlier decades.

What did Americans think of World War I before the US entered the conflict 100 years ago?

Abortion was first criminalized in the mid 1900s amidst concerns that too many white women were ending their pregnancies.

Today, we tend to assume dieting is for women, but in the 1860s, it was a masculine pursuit.

Trump ally Carl Higbie recently cited Japanese internment camps during World War II as a “precedent” for a proposed registry of Muslims in the U.S.