A collage of significant people from the time like the Beatles and Elvis.

How Americans Re-Learned to Think After World War II

In ‘The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War,’ Louis Menand explores the poetry, music, painting, dance and film that emerged during the Cold War.
Portrait of Walt Whitman.

How the American Civil War Gave Walt Whitman a Call to Action

Mark Edmundson on the great American poet as a defender of democracy.
An illustration featuring a man smoking a cigarette.

When the CIA Was Everywhere—Except on Screen

Hollywood was just fine avoiding all portrayals of the Central Intelligence Agency for years after the agency's founding in 1947.
Walt Whitman.

What Walt Whitman Knew About Democracy

For the great American poet, the peculiar qualities of grass suggested a way to resolve the tension between the individual and the group.
A mosaic of freedom and associated ideas

How Americans Lost Their Fervor for Freedom

The New Yorker critic's new book is a sequel of sorts to "The Metaphysical Club."
A group of librarians wearing masks during the 1918 Flu Pandemic.

Libraries and Pandemics: Past and Present

The 1918 influenza pandemic had a profound impact on how librarians do their work, transforming libraries into centers of community care.
Coffee table with books

A Brief History of Coffee Table Books: Origin, Precursors, and Popularity

Ever look at the tome on a coffee table and wonder why coffee table books are a thing? Consider this brief history of coffee table books.
Still from Saving Private Ryan, depicting soldiers in a landing craft.

How Saving Private Ryan's Best Picture Loss Changed the Oscars Forever

More than just an upset, "Saving Private Ryan" losing the Best Picture Oscar to "Shakespeare in Love" changed how Academy Awards are won.
Philip Guston

Philip Guston’s Peculiar History Lesson

On the painter’s politics of self-questioning.
Coconino National Forest sign

The Unsung Ranger Behind the U.S. Forest Service's Iconic Signs

Career ranger Virgil "Bus" Carrell had no design training, but "really gave a damn," say experts, about his lasting legacy.
Black and white photo of poet John Berryman having a beer and a conversation with a group of men

‘The Roots of Our Madness’

John Berryman's Dream Songs made explicit the racialization of American poetry's turn—and the whiteness of lyric tradition.
Paul Peter Porges with self-portrait, during his time in the US army, 1951-52.

‘They Were Survivors’: The Jewish Cartoonists Who Fled the Nazis

A new exhibition celebrates the work of three Austrian artists who escaped their country as Nazis took over and created daring work in the years after.
Text that says "Can a font be racist?" in the font "Won Ton."

Karate, Wonton, Chow Fun: The End of 'Chop Suey' Fonts

For years, the West has relied on so-called 'chop suey' fonts to communicate "Asianness" in food packaging, posters and ad campaigns.
Photographs and a cover of Spectra, a literary magazine.

Spectra: The Poetry Movement That Was All a Hoax

In the experimental world of modernist poetry, literary journals were vulnerable to fake submissions.
A women with her hands on the car horn
partner

Her Crazy Driving is a Key Element of Cruella de Vil’s Evil. Here’s Why.

The history of the Crazy Woman Driver trope.
Alfred Hitchcock directing

The Haunted Imagination of Alfred Hitchcock

How the master of suspense got his sadistic streak.

No Opening Day Without Von Tilzer!

The Jewish Tin Pan Alley composer who wrote ‘Take Me Out to the Ball Game’ had never been to a ballgame.
Pocahontas characters overlaid onto a landscape.

Deconstructing Disney: Queer Coding and Masculinity in Pocahontas

Disney gets inventive when they need to circumvent white people’s historical responsibility for genocidal atrocities — and queerness is a useful scapegoat.
Old Bay Seasoning

The Jewish Roots of Old Bay Seasoning

Oy Bay! Become seasoned on the history of America's beloved spice blend.
A graffiti mural in Los Angeles

The Emergence Of Gangsta Rap

A review of "To Live and Defy in LA: How Gangsta Rap Changed America."
Vincent Price.

The Strange Undeath of Middlebrow

Everything that was once considered lowbrow is now triumphant.
Cover of Crisco cookbook aimed at "the Jewish Housewife."

Inside the World's Largest Jewish Cookbook Collection

A librarian with a love for eBay built this trove of culinary history.
Illustration of Pimento Cheese on Bread by Carter.

Pimento-cracy

The history of pimento cheese as a working class fixture and a symbol of Southern culture as seen through mystery novels.
engraving of Harriet Beecher Stowe
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A Forgotten 19th-Century Story Can Help Us Navigate Today’s Political Fractures

Reconciliation is good — but not at any cost.
H.P. Lovecraft.

The Shadow Over H.P. Lovecraft

Recent works inspired by his fiction struggle to reckon with his racist fantasies.
Drawing of Speedy Gonzales

Why Do So Many Mexican Americans Defend Speedy Gonzales?

A stereotype? Definitely. Problematic? You bet. But many Mexican Americans still love the cartoon character.
Two characters in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, one rabbit and one human.

Archivists Are Trying to Chronicle Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ Unforgettable First Year

The challenge of documenting a virtual world.
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

The Poetics of Abolition

For poet Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, as for the Black Romantics, history is the repetition of anti-Black violence that has yet to be abolished.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The Trouble with Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Charlotte Perkins Gilman authored the beloved short story "The Yellow Wallpaper," but also supported eugenics and nativism.
Potato Head family
partner

Toys Are Ditching Genders for the Same Reason They First Took Them On

Why the Potato Heads are the latest toys becoming more inclusive.