Person holding a blonde American Girl doll and American Girl bag

All Dolled Up

How American Girl transformed the doll world—and why millennials love it so.
A stylized drawing of Bill Erquitt.

The Death of a Relic Hunter

Bill Erquitt was an unforgettable character among Georgia’s many Civil War enthusiasts. After he died, his secrets came to light.
A warehouse of canned salmon

How Canned Food Went From Military Rations to Fancy Appetizers

This simple technology changed the world.
Two American soldiers and farmer Olof Öhman posing with a supposed Viking runestone.

Why Americans Simply Love to Forge Viking Artifacts

No, roving bands of medieval Scandinavians did not visit West Virginia. (So far as we know.)
A Historic American Buildings Survey photograph of a house being demolished.

Before the Wrecking Ball Swung

The Historic American Building Survey's mission to photograph important architecture before its demolition.

‘On the Brink of Extinction’: A Food Historian’s Hunt for Ingredients Vanishing from U.S. Plates

Disappearing foods – and why they need protecting.
The Trubek and Wislocki Houses, 1970, Nantucket, Massachusetts, by Denise Scott-Brown and Robert Venturi.

The Historian’s Revenge

The rise and fall of the Shingle Style ideal.
Wendell Yellow Bull

A Prominent Museum Obtained Items From a Massacre of Native Americans in 1895. The Survivors’ Descendants Want Them Back.

A 1990 law was meant to “expeditiously return” such items to Native Americans, but descendants are still waiting.
A drawing of the exhumation of President Monroe's coffin.

Which States Have the Most Dead Presidents?

The answer reveals grave robbing problems for America’s deceased leaders.
Scaffolding around the statue of President Theodore Roosevelt at the American Museum of Natural History as it is prepared for removal on December 2, 2021 in New York City

A New York Museum's House of Bones

The American Museum of Natural History holds 12,000 bodies — but they don’t want you to know whose.
Sheboygan Indian Mound Park.

Sheboygan's Indian Mound Park was Saved by a Garden Club and Newspaper Campaign

Earthen Indigenous burial mounds were created in the shape of birds, reptiles and mammals.
Park ranger looking at slides
partner

The Case of the Missing Park Posters: Ex-Ranger Hunts for New Deal-Era Art

A former park ranger is on the hunt to complete a collection of posters by artists commissioned by the government celebrating national parks.
Martin Luther King, Jr. at podium, with three men sitting behind him
partner

Tuskegee University’s Audio Collections

The archives of the historically Black Tuskegee University recently released recordings from 1957 to 1971, with a number by powerful civil rights leaders.
Botanical drawing of a peach.

In 1886, a US Agency Set Out to Record New Fruit Varieties. The Results Are Wondrous.

The history and legacy of a beautiful project to record thousands of new fruit varieties.
Texas Mission bell.

A Bell's Journey Through Texas History

For those in later years, the bell’s value lay not in its powerful sound, but in its visual representation.
Drawn picture of the tidal channel known as Hell Gate, in New York, circa 1775

Is There Sunken Treasure Beneath the Treacherous Currents of Hell Gate?

In the heart of New York City, a centuries-long hunt for Revolutionary War–era gold.
A group of women sitting under hooded hair dryers at a salon.
partner

A Short History of Hairdryers

The beauty parlor became a place of sociability for women in the twentieth century, partly aided by modern technology of hair drying.
Emily Dickinson Museum collection.

What Emily Dickinson Left Behind

The winding story of how a trove of 8,000 of the poet’s family objects were saved.
A collection of ninteenth-century manuscripts on top of a library table.

Fighting Words: The Pamphlets of a Democratic Revolution

To judge from the Concord collection, the public forum of antebellum America was no model of democratic deliberation.
A portion of the author’s music collection; bootleg cassette tapes and CDs. Photo by Maya Walker.

The Pirate Preservationists

When keeping cultural archives safe means stepping outside the law.
Portrait photo of Elsie Robinson.

A Woman Who Composed the First Draft of History Finds Herself Written Out of the History Books

Prominent institutions, such as the Smithsonian, have historically erased or omitted US women from archival records.
Common black rat in nest.

In Colonial Williamsburg, Thieving Rats Save History

Historians owe a debt of gratitude to these furry pilferers.
Dinosaur models and other prehistoric animals designed by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins.

The Bizarre True Story of Central Park’s Doomed Victorian Dinosaur Museum

For centuries, the infamous Boss Tweed was blamed for destroying its dino-models—but what really happened is even weirder.
Different Barbie designs sitting around a table.

Decoding Barbie’s Radical Pose

The “Barbie” movie glides over the history of dolls as powerful cultural objects.
Man spinning record player with woman in the background
partner

Making Music Male

How did record collecting and stereophile culture come to exclude women as consumers and experts?
A researcher holds a magnifying glass to an archival photograph.

Looking for a Lineage in the Lusk Archive

The records of a New York surveillance committee from the time of the First Red Scare document a radical world—and its demise.
Margot Robbie in "Barbie" film.

This is the Real History of Barbie

Before the eagerly-anticipated film hits our screens, we take a look back at the story of the world's most famous doll.
Portrait of a girl wearing a red coral necklace.

The Labor of Polyps and Persons

The meaning of coral jewelry in nineteenth-century America.
Typewriters on table at Milwaukee QWERTYFest

How Milwaukee Is Celebrating the Typewriter’s Long, Local History

150 years of typewriter history in the city that invented the QWERTY keyboard.
Lauren Davila, standing in front of a historical marker for slave auctions, in Charleston, South Carolina.

How a Grad Student Uncovered the Largest Known Slave Auction in the U.S.

The find yields a new understanding of the enormous harm of such a transaction.