Culture

A review of Lisa Duggan's book, "Mean Girl: Ayn Rand and the Culture of Greed.”

How an intense unclassifiable relationship shaped the history of modern thought.

How did facial hair win American men’s hearts and minds? Thank the War on Terror.

It was everywhere at the turn of the 20th century. It was also inedible.

Slavery and the Civil War were central to the development of photography as both a technology and an art.

In the realism, the set pieces, the operatic music, Sergio Leone was pointing the way towards modern filmmaking.

"But he'd have to acknowledge that the soul of his country is southern; the soul of his country is black."

To appreciate who Whitman was, we have to reinterpret the poet in ways that have made generations of critical gatekeepers uncomfortable.

How the 1960s Black Is Beautiful movement inspired her latest Fenty fashion collection.

The difference between the careers and reputations of the three famous authors is about gender as well as genius.

It didn't go exactly as planned. But for TAC's founder, this is where his populist antiwar movement may have begun.

Hundreds—or maybe thousands—of women and girls performed and recorded rock and roll in its early years.

Odetta’s artistry was a weapon in the Civil Rights struggle, and was crucial to the era’s politics.

Edward Said's Orientalism is still with us forty years after his influential book’s publication, but it is not the same as it was.

Family dynasties are neither new nor newly influential in pop.

How a black psychiatrist helped design a groundbreaking television show as a radical therapeutic tool for minority preschoolers.

A strong woman using a new tool to talk to people who were otherwise overlooked played as a joke for some. But was it effective?

The roots musician is inspired by the evolving legacy of the black string band.

A new history of Reconstruction traces the roots of American “respectability” politics through artwork.

American System-Built Homes in Chicago (and elsewhere).

A story of how Louis Wain single handedly made cats adored by Victorian society through to modern day.

Michael Washburn explains what we can glean from the failure of Tom Petty's 1985 concept album "Southern Accents."

Michael Kimmage considers "The Ideas That Made America: A Brief History" by Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen.

Air guitar competitions may seem rather new, but this sport has a long, evolving, and sometimes surprising history.

The strange and convoluted history of why yellow ribbons became a symbol of the Gulf War in the 1990s.

Disco, DJs, and the impact of the 12-inch single.

The improbable success of the curveball.

An anti-imperialist network made his warning possible.

Black America talks back to "The Good Gray Poet" at 200.

Real inclusivity is based on equal access to mediocrity.