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Originals
Most of the stories on Bunk are curated from outside sources. These are our very own.
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original
Mettlesome, Mad, Extravagant City
In the streets of New York, we try to imagine the city as Walt Whitman, and other artists of his time, experienced it.
by
Ed Ayers
on
September 21, 2023
original
A Gateway to the Past
The Arch in St. Louis stands as a monument to contradictory histories.
by
Ed Ayers
on
September 13, 2023
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Lost Prophets and Forgotten Heroes
Tracing the currents of American history that run through the Great Lakes region.
by
Ed Ayers
on
September 6, 2023
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Community Ideal
Visiting the sites of two 19th-century utopian experiments in the American Midwest.
by
Ed Ayers
on
August 29, 2023
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Reviewing the Oppenheimer Reviews
Christopher Nolan's blockbuster has generated a torrent of historical commentary about the birth of nuclear weapons. Is there something missing from the conversation?
by
Kathryn Ostrofsky
on
August 25, 2023
original
Freedom By the Sea
On the trail of whales, Melville, and Douglass in New Bedford.
by
Ed Ayers
on
August 9, 2023
original
The Book Read ‘Round the World
Literary history is packed into Concord’s “Old Manse,” but the tiny abode of Walden’s author proves the highlight of our New England trip.
by
Ed Ayers
on
June 23, 2023
original
Pieces of the Past
Dispatches from a spine-tingling day of visits to the places where James Fenimore Cooper, Herman Melville, and Thomas Cole created their most famous works.
by
Ed Ayers
on
March 15, 2023
original
Sacred Places
A visit to the site of Joseph Smith’s divine revelation makes for a different kind of public history experience.
by
Ed Ayers
on
February 27, 2023
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No Better Soil
In the first half of the 19th century, upstate New York was a hotbed of movements for reform. How visible is that history today?
by
Ed Ayers
on
January 23, 2023
original
The Life of Song
What the surprising career of Bob McGrath teaches us about popular music.
by
Kathryn Ostrofsky
on
December 14, 2022
original
Rainbows and Disappointments
There is a long and storied tradition of feeling underwhelmed by the natural spectacle of Niagara Falls. Still, the visitors keep coming.
by
Ed Ayers
on
December 13, 2022
original
Time for a Revolution
The economic transformations wrought by industrial capitalism in the 1820s and 30s look different when viewed up close.
by
Ed Ayers
on
November 28, 2022
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Tidying Up the Past
A history tour at Harper’s Ferry suggests that “commemoration” and “desecration” might be two sides of the same coin.
by
Ed Ayers
on
October 12, 2022
original
Redlining is Only Part of the Story
An annotated collection of resources from the Bunk archive that help explain the long history of housing discrimination.
by
Julian Maxwell Hayter
on
October 5, 2022
original
What is Political Realignment?
An annotated collection of resources from the Bunk archive that help explain the shifting sands of American politics.
by
Kathryn Ostrofsky
on
September 8, 2022
original
A Tour of Mount Auburn Cemetery
Two centuries of New England intellectual history through the lives and ideas of people who are memorialized there.
by
Kathryn Ostrofsky
on
September 7, 2022
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Our Flag Was Still There
How is the first half of the 19th century depicted in and around the nation’s capital? Ed Ayers hits the road to find out.
by
Ed Ayers
on
July 19, 2022
original
High Domes and Bottomless Pits
On the trip north from TN to OH, Ed Ayers visits the homes of two presidents, the birthplace of another, and a natural wonder that once drew visitors from far and wide.
by
Ed Ayers
on
July 6, 2022
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Native Trails
Ed Ayers travels back to his childhood stomping grounds in search of traces of the dispossession that took place there generations earlier.
by
Ed Ayers
on
June 13, 2022
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Gone to Carolina
Ed Ayers heads south in search of stories from two centuries ago. Traces are there, but larger meanings remain elusive.
by
Ed Ayers
on
May 31, 2022
original
History on the Road
After decades of reading, writing, and teaching about the American past, Ed Ayers sets out to see how that past is remembered in the places where it happened.
by
Ed Ayers
on
May 17, 2022
original
American Journey
A journal of my road trip to the formative decades of American history.
by
Ed Ayers
on
May 17, 2022
original
Best History Writing of 2021
Bunk's American History Top 40.
by
Tony Field
on
January 26, 2022
original
The World According to the 1580s
A newly digitized map offers a rare glimpse at the way Europeans conceived of the Americas before British colonization.
by
Benjamin Breen
on
April 17, 2019
original
How America Thought About Refugees 70 Years Ago
And other gleanings from the 1949 run of the Saturday Evening Post.
by
Benjamin Breen
on
February 26, 2019
original
The Drunkard’s Progress
Two hundred years ago, it was hard for Americans to miss the message that they had a serious drinking problem.
by
Benjamin Breen
on
January 17, 2019
original
Legends and Lore
A roadside marker program in New York State embraces the gray area between official history and local lore.
by
Allison C. Meier
on
October 23, 2018
original
Mum’s the Word
In the height of the Cold War, the NSA created a series of posters to keep its secrets from leaking. They're both wonderful and creepy.
by
Benjamin Breen
on
October 5, 2018
original
Zones of Doubt
What we can learn about trade policy from a misbegotten 19th century effort to quantify the chemical properties of wool.
by
David Singerman
on
October 2, 2018
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