Culture

Shaina Taub’s new musical follows Alice Paul’s tireless quest to win American women the vote.

In a new exhibit, Winslow Homer, once seen as the oracle of the nation’s innocence, is recast as a poet of conflict.

How the team came to have that name and why it still persists.

Navigating the line between historical records and mystic imagery to understand the Underground Railroad.

In the 1930s, a Seattle entrepreneur created a successful analog streaming platform—and ran it out of a drugstore.

What a new book and six companion videos have to say about the fate of Black classical music in America.

In 1929, Ethel Barrymore went on the ‘18-Day Diet.’ From there, it took the country by storm. Until, that is, its disciples began dying.

Pauline Hopkins, Booker T. Washington, and the Fight for The Colored American Magazine.

In the 1920s, the public hated cars. So the auto industry fought back — with language.

You can hear it in your head: the grunt your character makes when hopping a fence or leaping into battle. Its sonic roots trace all the way back to 1973.

On heavy metal’s fascination with Roman emperors.

Markoff’s biography of Stewart Brand notes that Brand’s ability to recognize and cleave to power explains a great deal of his career.

Video game history is lost faster than we can preserve it.

Balding has been the constant scourge of man since the beginning of time, and for millennia, our best solution was the comb-over.

On "Sesame Street," Delgado was able to build a character who challenged stereotypes. Luis was a business owner, a neighbor, and later a husband and father.

The California Historical Society contrasts how Chinese people were portrayed in the press with the dignified studio portraits taken in Chinatown.

The Coloured Hockey League doesn’t get a prominent place in most tellings of hockey’s story, but its legacy is undeniable.

On who gets caught in the crosshairs when it comes to “beef."

Digging down into the roots of white America’s infatuation with Black.

What are elevator passengers listening to?

"The American Scene" is Henry James’s indictment of what Americans had made of their land.

For "On the Road"’s author, it was a struggle to write, then a struggle to live with its fame. “My work is found, my life is lost,” he wrote.

A review of ”Man Ray: The Artist and His Shadows” by Arthur Lubow.

The captivity narrative as creation myth.

Taking seriously the midlife crisis.

From Phillis Wheatley to Lil Uzi Vert, Black names and their evolution tell the story of America.

She animated the horror and emotional intensity in American labor songs by projecting them like a European opera singer.

Over its 13-year run, Vee Jay built a roster that left a lasting impact on every genre of music.

Close your eyes and imagine you’re married to Ernest Hemingway. Now, imagine it twice as bad, and you’ll be approaching the life story of Mary Welsh Hemingway.

Black contestants — and winners — have not translated into changed beauty standards or structural transformation.