Culture

How the Earth, Wind & Fire hit "September" came into being, and why it continues to unite the generations on the dance floor.

In early 20th-century St. Louis, Pearl Curran claimed to have conjured a long-dead New England Puritan named Patience Worth through a Ouija board.

The gradual decline of the fade-out in popular music.

A closer look at non-Native Americans that appropriate, fabricate, and invent Native identities for themselves.

How Nina Simone turned the movement into music.

James Gordon Bennett Jr.'s most eccentric public service announcement.

In 1855, prohibitionists set their sights on the wettest day of the year.

Black barbershops are a symbol of community, and they provide a window into our nation's complicated racial dynamics.

People without the means to visit America's wonders could finally picture it for themselves.

In 1883, heavy-weight boxing champion John L. Sullivan embarked on a tour of the country that would make him a sports superstar.

The schism isn't between TV viewers who love a show and those who hate it—it’s between those who love it in very different ways.

Nelson “Little D” Ross talks soul and significance with music historian Robert Gordon.

With help from the CIA, Paul Engle’s writing students battled Communism and eggheaded abstraction. The damage to writing still lingers.

“Hendrix used a range of technological innovations...to expand the sound of the guitar, to make it ‘talk’ in ways that it never had.”

Charlie Rich, the tragic soul man whose legacy was largely forgotten after his brief period of fame.

Nostalgia has always been harnessed or packaged to sell things.

What our mannequins say about us.

A new exhibit looks at the posters sent out by non-profits and the government in response to the spread of AIDS.

Over the past decade, music devoted to the cause of amnesty for undocumented immigrants has flourished across the U.S.

The Infectious Texts project is the compilation of 41,829 issues of 132 newspapers from the Library of Congress.

The little-known story of one of the best known sing-along songs, and its connection to women's suffrage.

The American journalist propelled into the limelight when she went head-to-head with Nellie Bly on a race around the world.

The dark side of Crèvecoeur's "Letters from an American Farmer."

Rachel Herrmann asks whether there’s such a thing as “American food.”

The history of haunted houses in the movies.

A look back at the bicycle’s meteoric rise to the height of nineteenth century fashion, and its subsequent fall, provides striking parallels to today's bike culture.

The rise and fall and rise of the traditional St. Patrick's Day meal.

"Why do you have black dolls?"

A path to freedom for enslaved blacks, an engine of economic independence, a treat for Mardi Gras revelers.

Cuddle up with your sweetie for stories about three centuries of pre-marital intimacy, from Puritan "bundling" to the back-seat of the parents' Buick.