popular culture

In narrowly focusing on Leonard Bernstein’s tortured personal life, "Maestro" fails to explore his tortured artistic life.

Tom Wolfe was no radical.

A conversation about "the gains and pains of America’s exercise obsession."

Who designed the first sticker? And does anyone care about it anymore?

He sold 60 million books and 100 million records. Then he disappeared.

A new book explains why Americans know so little about other countries.

A new biography details the cultural jumble of literature, dirty jokes, and everything in between that went into the making of the foremost self-made American.

Everything that was once considered lowbrow is now triumphant.

Pop culture's surreal embrace of the serial killer.

A primary source set and teaching guide created by educators.

For half a century, viewers scorned the laugh track while adoring shows that used it. Now it has all but disappeared.

Larry David is the last of his kind—and in several ways.

In 1968 Gaye shifted his musical vision to give voice to impoverished Black urban communities and the rising dissent against involvement in the Vietnam War.

Our thinking about nostalgia is badly flawed because it relies on defective assumptions about progress and time.

The historical novel isn’t cool. Popular? Yes. Enduring? Yes. A bit, well — for nerds? Also yes. Coolness lies in being at the right place at the right time.

Meditating on blotter not just as art, or as a historical artifact, but as a kind of media, even a “meta medium.”

America’s favorite gun.

Peanuts’ Franklin has been a controversial character for decades. A new special attempts reparations.

After 40 years and more than 25 million copies sold, what story does ‘Legend’ tell us about Bob Marley and the people listening to it?

The representation of Jews in antebellum popular culture reveals that many Americans found them both cartoonishly villainous and enticingly exotic.