Culture

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.

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.

On who has had access to guns in the U.S., and what those guns have meant to the people who have owned them.

Forty years ago, Willie, Waylon, Jerry Jeff, and a whole host of Texas misfits brought the hippies and rednecks together in outlaw country.

The rise and fall of the Post Office from Tocqueville to Fred Rogers.

Thomas Jefferson's republican simplicity.

Forty years ago this fall, a bunch of feminists released an album. They wanted to change … everything.

Alfredo Villanueva-Collado on his J.C. Leyendecker collection and the fascinating story behind this oft-neglected male image maker.

A brief history of camping.

In the modern Olympics’ early days, painters, sculptors, writers and musicians battled for gold, silver and bronze.

LSD, ecstasy, and a blast of utopianism: How 1967’s “Summer of Love” all began.

Ambrose Bierce deviated from the refined eeriness of English-style ghost stories for his haunting descriptions of fateful coincidence and horrific revelation.

Benjamin Breen examines the importance of John White's sketches of the Algonkin people and the art's relation to the Lost Colony.

With Diner, Barry Levinson turned a film about nothing into a male-bonding classic, launched careers, and spawned hits from Seinfeld to The Office.

John Adams would not be happy to see what Independence Day has become.

Stowe’s novel shifted public opinion about slavery so dramatically that it has often been credited with fuelling the war that destroyed the institution.

The Popular Front and American culture.

Frances Hodgson Burnett's biographer considers her life and how personal tragedy underpinned the creation of her most famous work.

What are the origins of the mechanical siren?

It crops up in our speech dozens of times every day, although it apparently means little. So how did "OK" conquer the world?

Halloween's most iconic candy (and its most polarizing) used to be a year-round snack. Then came the candy corn explosion.

The interconnected circles of writers, painters, muses, and more.

An intellectual history.