Excerpts

Curated stories from around the web.
New on Bunk

Teddy Roosevelt Hated Baseball

It was a struggle to even get the president to go to a game.

Jenny Zhang on Reading Little Women and Wanting to Be Like Jo March

Looking to Louisa May Alcott's heroine for inspiration.

How Google Discovered the Value of Surveillance

In 2002, still reeling from the dot-com crash, Google realized they’d been harvesting a very valuable raw material — your behavior.

A Brief History of American Pharma: From Snake Oil to Big Money

The dark side of the medical industrial complex.

The Political Chaos and Unexpected Activism of the Post-Civil War Era

Charles Postel on the temperance crusade that galvanized the American women's movement.

A Brief and Awful History of the Lobotomy

Groundbreaking discoveries... but at what cost?

Fried Chicken Is Common Ground

If you like hot chicken, perhaps you’d be interested in knowing where it comes from.

Why Were the 1970s So… Weird?

When the counterculture optimism receded, things got ugly.

American Green

How did the plain green lawn become the central landscaping feature in America, and what is the ecological cost?

Jill Lepore on Early American Ideas of Nationalism

"Inevitably, the age of national bootblacks and national oyster houses and national blacksmiths produced national history books."
Workers with a steam plough on a sugar plantation in Puerto Rico.

How Wall Street Colonized the Caribbean

The expansion of banks like Citigroup into Cuba, Haiti, and beyond reveal a story of capitalism built on blood, labor, and race.

On America’s Wild West of Dinosaur Fossil Hunting

In 19th-century America, rare old bones were a resource like any other.

The Rocket Scientist Who Had to Elude the FBI Before He Could Escape Earth

Frank Malina's scientific dreams were as radical as his politics.
Political cartoon of Columbia giving the Civil Rights bill to a Black man.

What Are These Civil Rights Laws?

The context and aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision to kill the Civil Rights Act of 1875.

Edmund White on Stonewall, the ‘Decisive Uprising’ of Gay Liberation

At what point does resistance become the only choice?

How Cars Transformed Policing

Most communities barely had a police force and citizens shared responsibility for enforcing laws. Then the car changed everything.

How Spaghetti Westerns Shaped Modern Cinema

In the realism, the set pieces, the operatic music, Sergio Leone was pointing the way towards modern filmmaking.
Lithograph of Black wet nurse nursing a white baby.

George Washington’s Midwives

The economics of childbirth under slavery.

William S. Burroughs and the Cult of Rock ‘n’ Roll

From Bob Dylan to David Bowie to The Beatles, the legendary Beat writer’s influence reached beyond literature into music in surprising ways.
Banthe Bombers protest photograph by Richard Avedon.

Richard Avedon and James Baldwin’s Joint Examination of American Identity

Their 1964 collaboration, "Nothing Personal," brought together aspects of American life and culture through photographs and text.

How Alexander Calder Became America's Most Beloved Sculptor

In an exclusive excerpt from his new book, 'Calder: The Conquest of Time,' Jed Perl reveals a hidden side of the artist.

Poems of the Manhattan Project

John Canaday's poems look at nuclear weapons from the intimate perspectives of its developers.

Laura Ingalls Wilder and One of the Greatest Natural Disasters in American History

When a trillion locusts ate everything in sight.
Hillary Clinton speaking about early childhood development.

The Mismeasure of Minds

25 years later, The Bell Curve’s analysis of race and intelligence refuses to die.

Inside San Francisco’s Plague-Ravaged Chinatown

A city on the edge.
Two hikers sit on a mountaintop and look at the view.

Climbing Mountains for the Right to Vote

On the 1909 National American Woman Suffrage Association Convention in Seattle.
Pile of garbage.

The Curious History of Crap—From Space Junk to Actual Poop

We don't think much about where our waste goes, but the history of what we do with poop is also the history of how we grow food.

Where to Score: Classified Ads from Haight-Ashbury

From 1966-1969, the underground newspaper 'San Francisco Oracle' became exceedingly popular among counterculture communities.

The Rage and Rebellion of the Detroit Riots, Captured in One Poem

50 years later, Philip Levine's poem, "They Feed They Lion," helps us remember and understand that time.

The Price of Plenty: How Beef Changed America

Exploitation and predatory pricing drove the transformation of the beef industry – and created the model for modern agribusiness.

What Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People” Can Teach the Modern Worker

Dale Carnegie treated the employee-employer relationship as a sacred, symbiotic bond.
Street sign for Flatville, surrounded by flat agricultural fields.

The View from the Middle of Everything

Dispatches From Flatville, Illinois.

On Early 20th-Century America’s Unhealthy Fixation with ‘Hygiene’

Junk Science, paternalism, and a misplaced faith in 'expertise.'

The History Behind Baseball’s Weirdest Pitch

The improbable success of the curveball.
Ad for children's aspirin.

‘Candy Aspirin,’ Safety Caps, and the History of Children’s Drugs

The development, use, and marketing of medications for children in the 20th century.

The Innovation Cult

The function of the "innovation" buzzword is to sustain the myth that business genius creates society’s wealth.

A Very Great Change

The 1868 presidential election through the eyes of a Southern white woman.

The Cautionary Patriotism of the Presidents Adams

Father and son alike, suspicious of too much charisma.
Row of suburban houses.

Welcome to the Radical Suburbs

We all know the stereotypes. But what about the suburbs of utopians and renegades?

We Built a Broken Internet. Now We Need to Burn It to the Ground.

Silicon Valley veteran Mike Monteiro explains how designers destroyed the world.
James Baldwin.

The Forgotten Baldwin

Baldwin demands that the Atlanta child murders be more than a mere media spectacle or crime story, and that black lives matter.

A Brief History of Porn on the Internet

Pornographers were in many ways the innovators who fueled the rise of the internet as we know it.
Garry Winogrand book on a shelf.

Garry Winogrand’s Photographs Contain Entire Novels

A photographer whose work resembles that of a realist novelist, we observe a cast of characters as they change over time.
Jemima Wilkison.

The Person Formerly Known as Jemima Wilkinson

Awakening from illness, the newly risen patient announced that Jemima had died and that her body had been requisitioned by God for the salvation of humankind.

Voices in Time: Horror Movie Scene-Setting

The author of 'High-Risers' revisits 'Candyman,' in which public housing is the greatest horror of all.

Just Like Us

Boston and Providence meet the famous Siamese twins, Chang and Eng Bunker.

Voices in Time: Epistolary Activism

An early nineteenth-century feminist fights back against a narrow view of woman’s place in society.

How Violent American Vigilantes at the Border Led to Trump’s Wall

From the 80s onwards, the borderlands were rife with paramilitary cruelty and racism. But the president’s rhetoric has thrown fuel on the fire.

Encyclopedia Hounds

A few of Encyclopædia Britannica’s famous readers, on the occasion of its 250th anniversary.
A Japanese interment camp used during World War II in Honolulu, Hawaii.

The Forgotten Internment of Japanese Americans in Hawaii

A dark chapter in the history of religious persecution.
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