William Faulkner in front of bookshelf

William Faulkner’s Tragic Vision

In Yoknapatawpha County, the past never speaks with a single voice.
Picture of Amazing Fantasy #15, the first appearance of the superhero known as Spider-Man.

The Subversive Spider-Man: How Spidey Broke the Superhero Mold

Once Peter Parker received his miraculous spider powers, the last thing he wanted to do was go out and get a colorful costume and fight crime.
Black-and-white image of two men behind bar

The Gilded Age In a Glass: From Innovation to Prohibition

Cocktails — the ingredients, the stories, the pageantry — can reveal more than expected about the Gilded Age.
Actors James Stewart as George Bailey, Donna Reed as Mary Hatch, and Frank Faylen as Ernie in the 1946 film It’s a Wonderful Life. (Photo by Silver Screen Collection / Getty Images)

That Time the FBI Scrutinized “It's a Wonderful Life” for Communist Messaging

The film “deliberately maligned the upper class,” according to a report that didn’t like the portrayal of Mr. Potter as a bad guy.
Johnny Cash performing with band
partner

The Radicalism of Johnny Cash

The best-selling musical artist in the world in 1969, Johnny Cash sang of (and for) the "forgotten Americans": the imprisoned men of all races.
Comedian Charlie Hill on stage with a microphone.

‘Part of Why We Survived’

Is there something in particular about coming from a Native background that makes a person want to write and perform comedy?
Test launch of an ICBM, reminiscent of a star with a long tail in the night sky.

“Do You Hear What I Hear” Was Actually About the Cuban Missile Crisis

The holiday favorite is an allegorical prayer for peace.
Don Cornelius and the Soul Train Dancers on the dance floor, with fist raised in the Black Power salute, at the end of a show.

Soul Train and the Desire for Black Power

Don Cornelius had faith that Black culture would attract a mass audience, and a belief that Black culture should be in the hands of Black people.
Frank Sinatra singing into a microphone.

The Christmas Carol Canon That Could Have Been

Pheasants? 'Dickory dock'? Toyland? Here's how a narrow slice of American history changed the holidays forever.
Paul Robeson in 1960, London, performing on stage in front of a crowd.

Black King of Songs

His communism brought the great American singer Paul Robeson trouble in the US, but helped make him a hero in China.
Cover of an early Superman comic book.

The Vigilante World of Comic Books

A sweeping new history traces the rise of characters caught in a Manichaean struggle between good and evil.
Frame from the film with Jimmy Stewart's character George Bailey receiving hugs from his wife and children.

What 'It's a Wonderful Life' Teaches Us About American History

The Christmas classic, released 75 years ago, conveys many messages beyond having faith in one another.
Santa Claus, Mrs. Claus, and snowman.

How Mrs. Claus Embodied 19th-Century Debates About Women's Rights

Many early stories praise her work ethic and devotion. But with Mrs. Claus usually hitting the North Pole’s glass ceiling, some writers started to push back.
Image of a 1970's band invoking the imagery of the Lost Cause and the Confederacy.

Whistlin' D ----.

Why songs of the southland are really northern.
Clockwise from left: William Dawson, Marian Anderson, William Grant Still, Florence Price. Background features the score of Price’s Violin Concerto No. 2.

Classical Music and the Color Line

Despite its universalist claims, the field is reckoning with a long legacy of racial exclusion.
Leonard Bernstein in the 1960s, at his desk piled with music scores, reading one, pen in hand.

Conservatives Say Liberals Want West Side Story to Be “Woke Side Story”

The beloved musical’s creator struggled to find a place between left and center.
Frame from the film Being the Ricardos, features Nicole Kidman as Lucille Ball and Javier Bardem as Desi Arnaz at a screen reading for the "I Love Lucy" show.

The True History Behind 'Being the Ricardos'

Aaron Sorkin's new film dramatizes three pivotal moments in the lives of comedy legends Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.
Ansel Adams photograph of a baseball game with the Sierra Nevada mountains in the background.

An American Landscape

In 1943, Ansel Adams traveled to photograph Manzanar—one of the ten internment camps that together detained 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II.
Illustration of Louise Fitzhugh smiling and holding journal.

The Tragic Misfit Behind “Harriet the Spy”

The girl sleuth, now the star of a TV show, has been eased into the canon. In the process, she’s shed the politics that motivated her creation.
Picture of country singer Charley Pride performing with guitar and microphone.

Charley Pride: How the US Country Star Became an Unlikely Hero During the Troubles

Tammy Wynette and Johnny Cash cancelled gigs in Belfast during the violent 1970s, but Pride played on.
Johnny Cash in front of a microphone.

Johnny Cash Is a Hero to Americans on the Left and Right. But His Music Took a Side.

Listen to Blood, Sweat and Tears again.
A photo of Fontella Bass repeated as if it's a frame in a filmstrip.

Can't You See That I'm Lonely?

“Rescue Me,” on repeat.
The Crystals, a Black girl-group, performing at a high school prom.

The Kansas City School That Became a Stop for R. & B. Performers

In the nineteen-sixties, artists such as Bo Diddley and the Ike & Tina Turner Revue played the prom at Pembroke-Country Day.
Artists and people sitting on and around a hotel at Woodstock in 1967

The Dropout, a History: From Postwar Paranoia to a Summer of Love

The dropout was not just a hippy-trippy hedonist but a paranoid soul, who feared brainwashing and societal control.
People sitting on a hill overlooking a harbor

How We Became Weekly

The week is the most artificial and recent of our time counts yet it’s impossible to imagine our shared lives without it.
Falling apart neon sign for Lotus Chop Suey, a restaurant in Chicago

The Hidden, Magnificent History of Chop Suey

Discrimination and mistranslation have long obscured the dish's true origins.
Jewish actress and filmmaker Ellen Richter, striking a pose on screen while two men give her suspicious looks.

The Silences of the Silent Era

We can’t allow the impression of a historical lack of diversity in the art form to limit access to the industry today.
Yams under concrete with the leaves growing out of a crack in the sidewalk

The Deep and Twisted Roots of the American Yam

The American yam is not the food it says it is. How that came to be is a story of robbery, reinvention, and identity.

Macho Macho Men

Bodybuilding is routinely presented as the very apex of male heterosexuality—but its history is a bit gayer than you might think.
Still Life with Ham, 1625.

Thanksgiving and the Curse of Ham

19th-century African American writer Charles Chesnutt’s subversive literature.