Culture

Even during the worst of war, the ring-shaped confections offered a bite of joy and a much-needed morale boost to weary soldiers during World War I.

Meet these slippery, mischievous reflections of our anxieties about technology.

On the 85th anniversary of the first xerographic print, a collection of punk flyers from Cornell University provides an object lesson on anti-art.

A new biography of Edith Hamilton tells the story of how and why ancient literature became widely read in the United States.

In a new biography, the Velvet Underground front man embodies a New York that exists only in memory.

During the New Deal, mass left movements and government funding spawned a boomlet in working-class art. For once, art wasn’t just the province of the rich.

Will Hermes's new biography, "Lou Reed: The King of New York," tries—and fails—to pin the rocker down.

Amid Reagan’s late-sixties crackdown on the California counterculture, a jury was tasked with deciding whether Lenore Kandel’s psychedelic sex poems had “redeeming social importance.”

How American Indians in Hollywood have gone from stereotypes to starring roles.

Touring the American soul.

‘Time Warp’ all the way back to the 1800s.

Springsteen's albums offer a tragic-romantic view of the working class in Reagan-era America.

Reflections on Pavement, Nirvana, the very meaning of history, and the end of neoliberalism.

“You know how many second basemen or shortstops I knocked on their ass in my career?”

A new biography of the Velvet Underground founder, Lou Reed, considers the stark duality of the man and his music.

Bradley Cooper’s prosthetic nose is the latest example of the struggles around Jewish representation on the stage and screen.

Literature is key to a healthy democracy, but schools are leaving books behind.

W.E.B. Du Bois’ message to African American artists.

The new album “Some Mississippi Sunday Morning” collects gospel songs recorded inside a notorious penitentiary.

The first of these festivals debuted in the early 1960s, serving as a prime example of the United States' burgeoning counterculture.

RJ Smith’s biography of Chuck Berry examines his subject’s instinct for crossing the line musically, racially, and morally.

A conversation about "the gains and pains of America’s exercise obsession."

In the streets of New York, we try to imagine the city as Walt Whitman, and other artists of his time, experienced it.

The reissue of “Tim” shows both the prescience and the unrealized promise of the beloved band.

Inmates at this bucolic but brutal prison have long been singing the blues to sustain themselves, and a new compilation of gospel songs continues the legacy.

The most hypnotic piece of music released so far in 2023 was recorded forty-seven years ago in a barely adequate studio in Rockland County, New York.

Sly and the Family Stone suggested new possibilities in music and life—until it all fell apart.

The 1960 film was penned by two blacklisted Communist writers. Its arrival in theaters was a middle finger to the McCarthyist witch hunt in Hollywood.

The famed opera has been criticized for its racist portrayals of Asian-Americans.

Like the spies themselves, the image we have of something is often what gets us in trouble.