Sonny Rollins playing saxophone.

The Monumental Improvisations of Sonny Rollins

Rollins never wavered in his determination to get things right, and often that meant reinventing himself and, along the way, jazz as well.
Edgar Allan Poe

Poe vs. Himself: On the Writer’s One-Sided War with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The story of the Little Longfellow War.
Shadow of Jason Aldean performing on stage.

Jason Aldean's 'Small Town' Is Part of a Long Legacy with a Very Dark Side

The country song that pits idyllic country life against the corruption of the city is a well-worn trope. Aldean's song reveals the dark heart of the tradition.
The male-dominated field of pop songwriting.

Women are Superstars on Stage, but Still Rarely Get to Write Songs

Songwriting credits since 1958, broken down by gender.
Martha Graham

Martha Graham’s Movement

A recent biography dives into the choreographer's role as both an artist and figure of early American modernism.
Oppenheimer movie poster.

The Race to Make Hollywood’s First Atomic Bomb Movie

Before Christopher Nolan’s "Oppenheimer," the world nearly got Ayn Rand’s "Tribute to Free Enterprise."
Scene from "The Sugarland Express." A woman is leaning out the window of police car.

Hot Pursuit: The Brief Rise of 1970s Hixploitation Cinema

On the drive-in movie culture that captured a yearning for fast cars on dusty roads.
Basketball players resting on court

Game Changer

On the mismatched sporting advice of Clair Bee and John R. Tunis.
Diners conversing at French restaurant.

Crème de la Crème

How French cuisine became beloved among status-hungry diners in the United States, from Thomas Jefferson to Kanye West.
Franz Kafka

How Franz Kafka Achieved Cult Status in Cold War America

And the origins of the term “Kafkaesque.”
Statue atop U.S. Capitol dome.

How an Enslaved Genius Saved the Capitol Dome’s ‘Freedom’ Statue

The Statue of Freedom atop the U.S. Capitol wouldn’t exist without the artistry of an enslaved man named Philip Reed.
Tennessee Williams

How Thomas Lanier Williams Became Tennessee

A collection of previously unpublished stories offers a portrait of the playwright as a young artist.
Puff Daddy performs at his annual White Party.

Hip-Hop’s Midlife Slump

It’s been 25 years since Puff Daddy went to the Hamptons. What’s changed?
A Ku Klux Klan march, late 1800s to early 1900s.

Tracing the Legacy of Southern White Migration

Unlike the Southern whites who moved en masse during the 20th century, these early migrants often had direct, personal ties to the institution of slavery.

Digital Queers: How Computers Transformed LGBTQ Life in the United States

Digital communications allowed transgender individuals and organizations the digital tools to organize and connect at a previously impossible scale and speed.
Woody Guthrie

Will Rogers & Woody Guthrie, Two Great Americans

Popular culture and social critique through Rogers' writing and Guthrie's songs.
Willie Mae Thornton

'Why Willie Mae Thornton Matters' Explores the Legacy of the Black Musician Who Made 'Hound Dog' a Hit

Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton lived an unapologetic life that transcended genres and gender norms beyond her bluesy hit song and the “Elvis moment.”
Illustrated portrait of Don DeLillo against a firey background.

Secret Histories

Don DeLillo's Cold Wars.
A women's suffrage demonstration with banners on the steps of the US Capitol in 1917.

Feminism in the Dock

Can (and should) conservatives reclaim feminism from the radicals?
Henry David Thoreau with a propeller cap.

Henry David Thoreau Was Funnier Than You Think, Particularly on the Subject of Work

On the necessary “deep sincerity” of dark humor.
The New York Renaissance basketball team.

The Harlem Hoopsters of the Renaissance

The New York Renaissance, also known as the Harlem Renaissance, was the first Black-owned, all-black, fully-professional basketball team established in 1923.
Marsha P. Johnson and others at Pride march, with large fan.

Beyond the Binary

The long history of trans.
Title page of garden club cookbook.

Tahir’s Tamales: Syrian Cooking in the American South

Community cookbooks provide a perspective on the American melting pot.
Cormac McCarthy.

Cormac McCarthy’s Unforgiving Parables of American Empire

He demonstrated how the frontier wasn’t an incubator of democratic equality but a place of unrelenting pain, cruelty, and suffering.
A walkway with walls covered in graffiti.

Graffiti Has Undergone a Massive Shift in a Few Quick Decades as Street Art Gains Social Acceptance

In the last decade, some graffiti writers have moved from outlaw taggers to sought-after artists.
Artistic representation of a man using psychedelics. The man's head appears like a matryoshka doll.

Brains on Drugs

Between the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, drug use to expand one’s consciousness went from an intellectual pastime to an emblem of social decay.
George H.W. Bush, wearing a Yale baseball uniform, receives the manuscript of Babe Ruth’s autobiography.

In Babe Ruth’s Final Steps on Public Stage, Two Brushes With History

Babe Ruth's final days revealed his mortality, and made more history, when he encountered a future U.S. president.
1903 postcard depicts two Black actors, one of whom is dressed in drag, performing a cakewalk in Paris.

The First Self-Proclaimed Drag Queen Was a Formerly Enslaved Man

In the late 19th century, William Dorsey Swann's private balls attracted unwelcome attention from authorities and the press.
Collage of a shirtless performer and a cutaway image of an egg.

My Generation

Anthem for a forgotten cohort.
The Ferguson Unit Rhythmeer Band plays at the Jim Ferguson Unit in Madison County, Texas.

The Blues Behind Bars: How Southern Prisons Shaped American Music

Incarcerated musicians have crafted some of the most iconic songs in American music history while prisons reap the profits.