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Should a Colombian Buy a Banjo?

How preparation for a big purchase turned into an adventure through history.
by Santiago Flórez via HNN on April 16, 2024
Rows of shelves in a historical archive.

Archival Shouting

Silence and volume in collections and institutions.
by Karin Wulf via Perspectives on History on April 10, 2024
Nini Nguyen and a Bahn Mi sandwich.

How the Vietnamese Made Their Mark on Cajun Cuisine

Top Chef contestant Nini Nguyen shares the history of the Viet diaspora and how two cultures combined to create a whole new delicious Southern flavor.
by Nini Nguyen via Food & Wine on February 24, 2023
Statue of Paul Revere on Boston's Freedom Trail.

On the Trail—to Freedom?

Touring the palimpsests of cities.
by Charlie Riggs via The Hedgehog Review on November 1, 2023
The Three Strikes You’re Out fishing crew : several older Black man posing and smiling around a large fish.

Fish Hacks

Often dismissed as a “trash fish,” the porgy is an anchor of Black maritime culture.
by Jayson Maurice Porter via Distillations on November 17, 2023
Skyscraper construction workers at lunch photo, but sitting atop a web search bar.

Social Media Is Not What Killed the Web

Better browsers made things worse.
by Ian Bogost via The Atlantic on March 25, 2024
Four typewriters including the Nazi-built Urania model.

Why the World of Typewriter Collectors Splits Down the Middle When These Machines Come Up for Sale

In this new hobby, I found so many stories.
by Mark Lawrence Schrad via Slate on March 16, 2024
J. Robert Oppenheimer.

Oppenheimer, Nullified and Vindicated

The inventor of the atomic bomb, the subject of Christopher Nolan’s new film, was the chief celebrity victim of the national trauma known as McCarthyism.
by Kai Bird via The New Yorker on July 7, 2023
Image from the filmstrip, showing a grieved woman with her head in her hands, being comforted by a man standing beside her

Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the Hands of the Red Scared

Again and again, a fervant British anticommunist's filmstrip of the novel shows images of women in states of distress.
by Georgina Blackburn via Commonplace on February 6, 2024
The Fulton Fish Market.

When Your Childhood Belongs to Everyone: Growing Up in a Manhattan That Changed Forever on 9/11

Loft life above the Fulton Fish Market and the day that everything changed.
by Emma Dries via Literary Hub on February 22, 2024
Ferris wheel at Cony Island.
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Spending My Free Time Researching Free Time

One academic tells the story behind his new book -- and his next one.
by Gary Cross via HNN on February 27, 2024
A photograph of the Arizona desert at sunset with cacti in the foreground.

I Want Settlers To Be Dislodged From the Comfort of Guilt

My ancestors were the good whites, or at least that’s what I’ve always wanted to believe.
by Natasha Varner via Electric Literature on February 8, 2024
A high school yearbook photo of Elizabeth Prewitt.

I Never Saw the System

As a white teenager in Charlotte, Elizabeth Prewitt saw mandatory school busing as a personal annoyance. Going to an integrated high school changed that.
by Elizabeth Prewitt via Admissions Projects on October 1, 2022
"The Book of Jewish Food" by Claudia Roden.

The Desk Dispatch: Layla Schlack on What Jewish Food Means to Her

"Frustratingly, Talmudically, Jewish food is simply what Jews eat," she writes.
by Layla Schlack via From The Desk Of Alicia Kennedy on January 15, 2024
Illustration by Yannick Lowery. A drawing of watermelons between hills and valleys

Tell Me Why the Watermelon Grows

Throughout its botanical, cultural, and social history, the watermelon has been a vehicle for our ideas about community, survival, and what we owe the future.
by Jori Lewis via Switchyard Magazine on November 25, 2023
Nicki Minaj and the autobiography of Malcolm X written by Alex Haley.

It’s Bigger Than Hip-Hop

We cannot understand the last fifty years of U.S. history—certainly not the first thing about Black history—without studying the emergence and evolution of rap.
by Austin McCoy via The Baffler on January 9, 2024
Sunrise over the Appalachian Mountains

Thicker Than Water: A Brief History of Family Violence in Appalachian Kentucky

Knowing I come from people who lived hard lives and endured terrible things is difficult. Knowing that I come from someone who ruined lives haunts me.
by Angie Romines via Literary Hub on January 10, 2024
A photograph of four people on donkeys from the late 1800s.

A Question of Legacy

Some of my ancestors had money, and some held awful beliefs. I set out to investigate what I once stood to inherit.
by David Owen via The New Yorker on January 2, 2024
Tommie Smith and John Carlos raising their fists on the Olympic podium in 1968.

Be Realistic: Demand the Impossible

The revolutionaries of 1968 didn't succeed, but the world still needs turning upside down.
by Peter Linebaugh via Boston Review on August 1, 2018
Two women walking side-by-side.

Not White But Not (Entirely) Black

On the complex history of “passing” in America.
by Herb Harris via Literary Hub on May 3, 2023
Collage of a shirtless performer and a cutaway image of an egg.

My Generation

Anthem for a forgotten cohort.
by Justin E. H. Smith via Harper's on June 9, 2023
Family photo.

Where Do Children’s Earliest Memories Go?

Our first three years are usually a blur and we don’t remember much before age seven. What are we hiding from ourselves?
by Kristin Ohlson via Aeon on July 30, 2014
Henry Kissinger in the table in the White House situation room.

Kissinger, Me, and the Lies of the Master

‘Off off the record’ with the man who secretly taped our telephone calls.
by Seymour M. Hersh via seymourhersh.substack on December 6, 2023
The aftermath of U.S. bombs in Neak Luong, Cambodia, on Aug. 7, 1973.

Kissinger's Bombings Likely Killed Hundreds of Thousands of Cambodians and Set Path for Khmer Rouge

A Cambodian scholar who fled the Khmer Rouge as a child writes about the legacy of Henry Kissinger, who died at the age of 100 on Nov 28, 2023.
by Sophal Ear via The Conversation on November 30, 2023
Group of African-American World War I veterans

The Meaning of ‘Sir’ and ‘Ma’am’

“I’d assumed this practice was a manifestation of military decorum.”
by Tracy K. Smith via The Atlantic on November 14, 2023
Collage of Black woman and marriage certificate.

Why Is America Afraid of Black History?

No one should fear a history that asks a country to live up to its highest ideals.
by Lonnie G. Bunch III via The Atlantic on November 13, 2023
The Cross-Bronx Expressway, April 1971. Photo by Dan McCoy/Environmental Protection Agency/National Archives

How the New York of Robert Moses Shaped my Father’s Health

My dad grew up in Robert Moses’s New York City. His story is a testament to how urban planning shapes countless lives.
by Katie Mulkowsky via Aeon on November 3, 2023
Shemp Howard and Tiny Brauer in "Fling in the Ring"

The House Next Door to the Stooges

A visit to the old neighborhood.
by Robin Hemley via Turning Life into Fiction on May 17, 2023
Sparkles in light coming through windows of an empty room.

Signs of Ghosts

What do we do when there are whole cities full of ghosts, each one with their own unique story to tell, each one with something left undone?
by Colin Dickey via Longreads on October 26, 2023
A Newton's Cradle where a black ball prepares to swing into 4 white ones.

Black Success, White Backlash

Black prosperity has provoked white resentment that has led to the undoing of policies that have nurtured Black advancement.
by Elijah Anderson via The Atlantic on October 16, 2023
Crowd holding shirts with names of Triangle Fire victims

A Memorial Restores Humanity To The 146 Ghosts of the Triangle Fire

Over a century after one of New York City’s deadliest industrial accidents, the names of its victims, most of them women, are being enshrined in steel.
by David Von Drehle via Washington Post on October 9, 2023
Henry Louis Gates Jr., Great Zimbabwe, circa 1996; photograph by Graham Smith.

Finding My Roots

The storytellers who taught me over the course of my career all knew how to bring Black history vividly to life.
by Henry Louis Gates Jr. via New York Review of Books on September 29, 2023
Smoke pours from La Moneda, the Chilean presidential palace, during the military coup.

50 Years After “the Other 9/11”: Remembering the Chilean Coup

Some personal reflections on history, memory, and the survival of democracies.
by Ariel Dorfman via The Nation on September 11, 2023
A worker in the Shinkolobwe mine.

The Dark History ‘Oppenheimer’ Didn't Show

Coming from the Congo, I knew where an essential ingredient for atomic bombs was mined, even if everyone else seemed to ignore it.
by Ngofeen Mputubwele via Wired on August 21, 2023

We Carry the Burden of Repatriating Our Ancestors

Here’s what it’s like to report on the process as an Indigenous journalist.
by Mary Hudetz via ProPublica on August 9, 2023
Illustrated silhouette of a person writing, with handwriting layered over the photo.

How Handwriting Lost Its Personality

Penmanship was once considered a window to the soul. The digital age has closed it.
by Rachel Gutman-Wei via The Atlantic on July 11, 2023
A rainbow over a waterscape.

Queer History Detective: On the Power of Uncovering Stories from the Past

With more queer history detectives, what could our future look like?
by Amelia Possanza via Literary Hub on May 30, 2023
Sonia Manzano and the Muppet Grover launch the Super Grover sandwich in honor of the 4,000th "Sesame Street" episode on Feb. 27, 2002, at a New York City deli.

I Was the First Latina on Sesame Street. Now I Have My Own Ideas About Bringing Representation to TV

"I thought, surely after the success of 'Sesame Street' and my contribution to it, all kinds of Latinx talent would flood the media. Not so."
by Sonia Manzano via HuffPost on June 4, 2023
The Osterizer’s Spin Cookery Blender and Cook Book.

Of Potato Latkes and Pedagogy: Cooking for the History Classroom

A cooking assignment helps illuminate the lives of Jewish women in the past for students.
by Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall via Perspectives on History on May 23, 2023
Portrait of an elderly Harriot Jacobs.

I Was Determined to Remember: Harriet Jacobs and the Corporeality of Slavery’s Legacies

How a folklorist encourages people to experience the past and present of a place.
by Koritha Mitchell via Los Angeles Review of Books on May 30, 2023
Illustration of a person reading, sitting on a giant stack of books.

Is Writing History Like Solving a Mystery?

Why historians like to think of themselves as detectives.
by Carolyn Eastman via Slate on May 21, 2023

Iowa: A Pastor's Son Notes When Politics Came to the Pulpit

A pastor's son reflects on his evangelical father's beliefs regarding politics in the pulpit.
by Randall Balmer via Religion & Politics on October 27, 2012
The men of the Dawahares family, a Syrian immigrant family who founded a clothing business in Kentucky.

Moses of Cairo (Illinois)

The idea that non-white immigrants are, generally speaking, new to the Midwest could not be further from the truth.
by Edward E. Curtis IV via Belt Magazine on April 23, 2023
A cut out from the magazine New Masses with the headline "For College Student H.H.C," pasted over a photo montage of an archive.

“H.H.C.”: The Story of a Queer Life—Glimpsed, Lost, and Finally Found

My hunt for one man across the lonely expanse of the queer past ended in a place I never expected.
by Aaron Lecklider via Slate on April 24, 2023
Food writer Edna Lewis.

What Is Southern?

A food writer's reminiscences of local cuisine in the springtime.
by Edna Lewis via Gourmet on January 1, 2008
Illustration of a wood-paneled formal bathroom.

The Bathrooms of Old New York

On the enormous, ornate, and extremely impractical bathtub in his family’s old-fashioned brownstone home.
by Joseph Wyler via The New Yorker on January 21, 1939
Composite by Hannah Yoest of images relating to the Iraq War.

Moral Injuries

Remembering what the Iraq War was like, 20 years later.
by Will Selber via Bulwark+ on March 20, 2023
Daniel Ellsberg at a press conference in New York City, 1972.

My Fifty Years with Dan Ellsberg

The man who changed America.
by Seymour M. Hersh via seymourhersh.substack on March 8, 2023
The author (left) talks with a student at the dedication ceremony for Annette Gordon-Reed Elementary School, October 2022.

A Historian Makes History in Texas

In the 1960s, Annette Gordon-Reed was the first Black child to enroll in a white school in her hometown. Now she reflects on having a new school there named for her.
by Annette Gordon-Reed via The Wall Street Journal on February 18, 2023
Norma and Mel Gabler, holding a textbook
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50 Years Ago, Anti-Woke Crusaders Came for My Grandfather

Christopher Rufo's polemical attacks against Critical Race Theory are not a new phenomenon. Public schools have long been a battlefield for ideological warfare.
by Max Jacobs via HNN on January 15, 2023
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