Culture

Revisiting his first book, "The Enormous Room," a reader can get a sense of everything appealing and appalling in his work.

She left exactly when we need her most.

Dr. Ruth left a legacy of sexual candor and the need to defend pleasure as a universal right—a conversation that is more relevant today than ever.

On defying gender norms and expectations in extreme sports.

Jews in the industry called for the Academy Museum to highlight the men who created the movie business. A voice in my head went, Uh-oh.

How a tragedy in New York City convinced Americans to learn how to swim.

On self-pleasure and sex education in children's literature.

Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F spends its final moments on a thrilling cinematic trope of the ’80s, one that I would argue is due for a comeback.

What happens when the automation of music makes it too easy to create and too easy to consume?

The anthology drama provided a venue for discourses on American national identity during the massive cultural, economic, and political changes occurring at midcentury.

On the 50th anniversary of “Chinatown” and the beginning of the end of petromodernity.

Norman Mailer’s generation learned to “write like men.” But their female contemporaries from Mary McCarthy to Diana Trilling pioneered a more enduring style.

A mythical creature that lurks in the pinelands of New Jersey has served as a reminder of the horrors that result when reproductive freedoms are destroyed.

Steven Hyden's new book about Bruce Springsteen's iconic "Born in the U.S.A" album is the product of a lifelong passion for the music of "The Boss."

Athletes drank poison, dodged traffic, stole peaches and even hitchhiked during the 24.85-mile race in St. Louis.

On our millennia-long love-hate relationship with getting in the water.

The painting of Mary Ann Tritt Cassell is likely the first known portrait commissioned by an American born into slavery.

The question of villainy has always been a complicated issue for African Americans in film.

The Phrygian cap, also known as the liberty cap, emerged as a potent symbol in 18th-century America and France.

On the long and continuing struggle of women artists for recognition on their own terms.

Isolation and a heady mix of hormones and fear provide the perfect setting for bloody revenge.

The rules governing everything from “Big Brother” to “The Real Housewives” started three decades ago, with a radical experiment on MTV.

How Black artists made modernism their own.

Everyone’s heard of Jim Henson. It’s time to give Bonnie Erickson — creator of beloved Muppets and mascots including the Phillie Phanatic — her due.

Siskel and Ebert and the heyday of popular movie criticism.

He wrote one of my favorite songs, but was so much more than a composer.

Power and choice in the 1930s novel.

Ann Powers’s deeply personal biography of Joni Mitchell looks at how a generation of listeners came to identify with the folk singer’s intimate songs.

Country music boosters rebranded the genre and tied it to America's military mission as a way to build popularity.

An essential new volume collects accounts of Japanese incarceration by patriotic idealists, righteous firebrands, and downtrodden cynics alike.