Told

Victorians found a way to anonymously tell people they didn’t like exactly how they felt.

How actual terrorists like Trump and ICE have expanded the definition of terrorism to include everyone they don’t like.

The Founding Father desired to be remembered by history.

On the eternal tension between human creativity and mechanical efficiency.

By the end of my life, there may be no one left who speaks like my father outside the hollers and the one-horse towns.

The documentary depicts the kind of maverick journalism we desperately need in our authoritarian times.

The paper’s Gaza coverage continues its pattern of downplaying US-backed atrocities in Bangladesh, East Timor, and Guatemala.

The Declaration drew on Enlightenment ideas to assert equality, justify independence, and inspire lasting debates over rights and slavery.

The intellectual world that Norman Podhoretz created.

With the death of Norman Podhoretz at 95, the transition from New York’s intellectual golden age to the age of grievance and provocation is complete.

Whatever happened to journalism?

In April 1962, Pete Seeger was abruptly banned from performing a scheduled set for children in Pittsburgh. The surrounding debate says a lot about the city.

The Mass Market paperback format is ending with a whimper.

In 2018, Trump began to routinely describe immigration as an ‘invasion.’ That rhetoric has fueled deadly violence for nearly two centuries.

You're misreading Lee Atwater’s infamous “southern strategy” quote as a confession.

The origin stories of Simon & Schuster, Random House, and Farrar, Sraus and Giroux.

A look at the long history of censorship in public school yearbooks.

David Lilienthal’s account of running the TVA can read like the "Abundance" of 1944. We have a lot to learn from what the book says — and what it leaves out.

"The Atlantic" was born in an era of information overload.

What led Peter Matthiessen from spying to starting a magazine?

Theodore Roosevelt was the first White House occupant to seek control over how newspapers covered him.

How the critic Malcolm Cowley made American literature into its own great tradition.

Analyzing every mention of 'democracy' in the Congressional Record.

Technology changes us—and it is currently changing us for the worse.

Long before Trump, a group of Dartmouth students weaponized outrage and satire to seize the spotlight.

The PC industry first landed on the FCC’s radar not for the computers themselves, but for the electrical noise they emitted. Blame the CB radio.

Arguably no American journalist wielded as much influence as Walter Lippmann did in the 20th century. But what did he do with that power?

Digging through dictionary archives to uncover the slowly changing meaning of “redskin.”

Unpacking the sensationalist, and occasionally biased, work of Richard Harding Davis.

Blaming video games for violence saves Americans from having to grapple with deeper, harder to solve societal problems.