Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, paying a visit to a hospital with wounded soldiers.

How Propaganda Became Entertaining

Ukraine’s wartime communications strategies have roots in World War II.
Poster for "Dr. Strangelove"

Hotline Suspense

The entire plot of Stanley Kubrick's Cold War satire turns around getting people on the phone.
John Gunther sitting in his library.

The Birth of the American Foreign Correspondent

For American journalists abroad in the interwar period, it paid to have enthusiasm, openness, and curiosity, but not necessarily a world view.
Image of typewriter overlaid onto news articles about fascism

A Century Ago, American Reporters Foresaw the Rise of Authoritarianism in Europe

A new book tells the stories of four interwar writers who laid the groundwork for modern journalism.
Protester in a march, holding a sign that reads "Bank on the future."

The Way We Talk About Climate Change Is Wrong

The language of “sacrifice” reveals we’re stuck in a colonial mindset.
Screen shots of PBS NewsHour anchors with title cards about conflicts in Angola, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Afghanistan.
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“Burning with a Deadly Heat”

PBS NewsHour coverage of the hot wars of the Cold War.
Lithograph of men and women drinking and dancing at an American Dance House.

The Influences of the Underworld: Nineteenth-Century Brothel Guides, Cards, and City Directories

Brothel guides tended to be small, making them easy to conceal. They also mimicked other publications to make it easier to hide the guides’ true purpose.
MLK waving at March on Washington
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"I Have A Dream": Annotated

Martin Luther King, Jr.'s iconic speech, annotated with relevant scholarship on the literary, political, and religious roots of his words.
Illustration of a bookshelf at CYCO with a bust of I.L. Peretz.

The Joy of Yiddish Books

The language sustained a Jewish diasporan secular culture. Today, that heritage survives in a gritty corner of Queens to be claimed by a new generation.
Nixon in front of presidential photographs.

Daniel Schorr and Nixon’s Tricky Road to Redemption

Nixon portrayed himself as a victim of the press. But from the 1952 Checkers speech through his post-presidency, he proved to be an able manipulator of the media.
A purported "jackalope" (jackrabbit with antelope horns) mounted to a wall.

The Legend of the Horned Rabbit of the West

Jackalopes have migrated from Wyoming across the nation, but what’s really known about the mythical creature?
Illustration of the 1878 Potter Investigation

Challenging Exceptionalism

The 1876 presidential election, Potter Committee, and European perceptions.
A row of brightly colored newspaper boxes.
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The Black Press Provides a Model for How Mainstream News Can Better Cover Racism

Digging deeper, offering historical context and going beyond official narratives will better serve the audience.
Newspaper headline "Crossword mania breaks up homes"

Wordle: The New York Times Hated Crossword Puzzles Before It Embraced Them

Long before the Wordle mania, there was the crossword puzzle craze. And newspapers condemned them as a dangerous menace to society.
Handwritten magazine index

‘Index, A History of the’ Review: List-O-Mania

At the back of the book, the index provides a space for reference—and sometimes revenge.
Silver medalists Karen Chen and Nathan Chen pose for a photo after the team event in the figure skating competition at the 2022 Winter Olympics, Feb. 7, 2022, in Beijing.
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The ‘Miracle on Ice’ Shaped the Olympics Coverage We’re Seeing Every Night

How rooting for American athletes became part of Olympic TV coverage.
Edit of Grammarly language change suggestions

Why Grammarly’s New Language Suggestions Miss the Mark

Slavery’s a sensitive subject, but so is the question of who gets to be an authority about language.
Richard Nixon giving a press briefing.
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Presidents v. Press: How the Pentagon Papers Leak Set Up First Amendment Showdowns

Efforts to clamp down on White House leaks to the press follow a pattern that was set during the Nixon era after the publication of the Pentagon Papers.
Willow, the Biden's brown cat

A Brief History of Cats in the White House

The Bidens' new cat Willow will be the first feline in the White House since the George W. Bush years, but is part of a long tradition.
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Best History Writing of 2021

Bunk's American History Top 40.
screenshot of primary source archive with "slut" in search browser and primacy source results listed below

Sluts and the Founders

Understanding the meaning of the word "slut" in the Founders' vocabulary.
Still of three characters from Young Frankenstein, parodying horror tropes.

Dun, Dun Duuun! Where Did Pop Culture’s Most Dramatic Sound Come From?

Did the iconic three-note sequence come from Stravinsky, the Muppets or somewhere else? Our writer set out to – dun, dun duuuun! – reveal the mystery.
A bronze statue of Civil War soldiers on horseback, in front of the U.S. Capitol building.

How Twitter Explains the Civil War (and Vice Versa)

The proliferation of antebellum print is analogous to our own tectonic shifts in how people communicate and what they communicate about.
Watercolor painting of enslaved people walking barefoot on a forced march, with white men on horseback at the front and back of the line.

Reparative Semantics: On Slavery and the Language of History

Scholarly accounts of slavery have been changing, but these correctives sometimes say more about historians than the historical subjects they're writing about.
Screen frame from the television program Home Improvement, depicting parents chastising their teenage son.

In the ‘90s the U.S. Government Paid TV Networks to Weave “Anti-Drug” Messaging Into Their Plot Lines

These storylines portrayed those addicted to drugs and alcohol as lunatics whose only cure can come from punitive measures, abstinence, and “tough love.”
What history tells us about the dangers of media ownership | Psyche Ideas

What History Tells us About the Dangers of Media Ownership

Is media bias attributable to corporate power or personal psychology? Upton Sinclair and Walter Lippmann disagreed.
Women wearing bathing suits and sashes stand in a row on the Atlantic City boardwalk in 1921, competing in a pageant.

How the Swimsuit Showdown Shaped the Miss America Contest

A new behind-the-scenes book, “There She Was,” and a Smithsonian collecting initiative celebrate the pageant’s centennial.
Man dressed as a clown with face paint, bald on top with big tufts of hair on the sides, and a bulbous nose.
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The Strangely Enduring Appeal of Bozo the Clown

How a clown won over several generations of children.
Illustrations from Twelve Years a Slave, by Solomon Northup, 1853, depicting an African American man hugging his family.

A Dark Cloud over Enjoyment

Refusing myths of joy and pain in slave narratives.
A European style woman standing in front of a complex crossword puzzle.

A Brief History of Word Games

Crossword puzzles may be a recent invention, but since we've had language we've played games with words.