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.
A turkey dinner on a table, with the Rockwell painting Freedom from Want, also featuring a turkey dinner, hanging on the wall.

How the American Right Claimed Thanksgiving for Its Own

Pass the free enterprise, please.
Illustration of circus entertainer in a cage with lions and tigers

Joe Exotic Channels the Spirit of America's 19th-Century Tiger Kings

The flamboyant big-cat aficionados of the Gilded Age weren’t strangers to fierce competition, threats and bizarre drama.
Black man and Black woman riding bikes on a suburban street.
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American Cycling Has a Racism Problem

How racism has shaped the history — and present — of bicycle use.
Image of B.B. King on stage playing guitar.

When Young Elvis Met the Legendary B.B. King

King recalled: “I liked his voice, though I had no idea he was getting ready to conquer the world.”
Regulus, painting by J.M.W. Turner, c. 1828.

It’s Time for Some Game Theory

Experiencing history in Assassin’s Creed.
Birthday candles lit on top of a cake.

The Strange Origins of American Birthday Celebrations

For most people, birthdays were once just another day. Industrialization changed that.
Unaccompanied children in a train station

Novel Transport

The anatomy of the “orphan train” genre.
Four soldiers in World War I uniforms pose eating Maillard's Eagle Sweet Chocolate. An eagle is illustrated on the candy bar wrapping.
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It Wouldn’t Be Halloween Without Candy. We Have World War I to Thank for That.

Candies of the Halloween season have roots in the sweet treats and real horrors of the Great War.
Man holding a Jack-O-Lantern.

Why Do We Carve Pumpkins Into Jack-O'-Lanterns For Halloween?

It's a tale thousands of years in the making.
Portrait photo of Geronimo in European style clothing, holding a bow and arrow, 1904.

Ambushing Geronimo

An introduction to salvage anthropology.
Jack O'lantern with children inside it

The Origins of Halloween Traditions

Carving pumpkins, trick-or-treating, and wearing scary costumes are some of the time-honored traditions of Halloween. But why do we do them?
Illustration of a ghost, resembling a woman figure.

Edith Wharton’s Bewitching, Long-Lost Ghost Stories

A reissued collection, long out of print, revives the author’s masterly stories of horror and unease.
Marian Anderson looking downwards

Marian Anderson’s Bone-Chilling Rendition of “Crucifixion”

Her performances of the Black spiritual in the nineteen-thirties caused American and European audiences to fall silent in awe.
Illustration of Frankenstein's monster and a terrified woman

The Horror Century

From the first morbid films a hundred years ago, scary movies always been a dark mirror on Americans’ deepest fears and anxieties.
Collage of Stephen Crane with Civil War scenes

The Miracle of Stephen Crane

Born after the Civil War, he turned himself into its most powerful witness—and modernized the American novel.
Group portrait, "Elihu Yale With Members of His Family and an Enslaved Child," 1719.

Who Is the Enslaved Child in This Portrait of Yale University's Namesake?

Scholars have yet to identify the young boy, but new research offers insights on his age and likely background.