Culture

In 1980, the whole city seemed to be on skates. I’m not sure why.

How we sit isn’t the only thing midcentury modernism sought to control.

How photography rose from the margins of the art world to occupy its vital center.

What do we know about the history of these designs? Who was buying this furniture when modernism was new, and why?

The history of hipsters is a not-so-secret history of race in the Atlantic world.

'The Man Who Lived Underground,' newly expanded from a story into a novel by the Library of America, may revise the seminal Black author's reputation.

His posthumously released novel, “The Man Who Lived Underground,” was written during a crisis of political faith.

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.

Mark Edmundson on the great American poet as a defender of democracy.

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

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

The New Yorker critic's new book is a sequel of sorts to "The Metaphysical Club."

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

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.

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

On the painter’s politics of self-questioning.

Career ranger Virgil "Bus" Carrell had no design training, but "really gave a damn," say experts, about his lasting legacy.

John Berryman's Dream Songs made explicit the racialization of American poetry's turn—and the whiteness of lyric tradition.

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.

For years, the West has relied on so-called 'chop suey' fonts to communicate "Asianness" in food packaging, posters and ad campaigns.

In the experimental world of modernist poetry, literary journals were vulnerable to fake submissions.

The history of the Crazy Woman Driver trope.

How the master of suspense got his sadistic streak.

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

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

Oy Bay! Become seasoned on the history of America's beloved spice blend.

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

Everything that was once considered lowbrow is now triumphant.

A librarian with a love for eBay built this trove of culinary history.

The history of pimento cheese as a working class fixture and a symbol of Southern culture as seen through mystery novels.