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Connie Converse playing a guitar

The Lost Music of Connie Converse

A writer of haunting, uncategorizable songs, she once seemed poised for runaway fame. But only decades after she disappeared has her music found an audience.
Native American and Black girls tossing around a medicine ball in a circle.

Right Living, Right Acting, and Right Thinking

How Black women used exercise to achieve civic goals in the late nineteenth century.
Edgar Allen Poe.

Did Voter Fraud Kill Edgar Allan Poe?

The death of mystery writer Edgar Allan Poe is its own mystery. But new research suggests election fraud may have contributed to his demise in Baltimore.
Buster Keaton holds himself up against two walls.

Puzzled Puss: Buster Keaton’s Star Turn

Keaton had been on the stage longest, risen the highest, fallen the furthest, and left the most indelible legacy.
Pamphlet for "The Drunkard, or, The Fallen Saved" play with alcohol bottles drawn next to the title

Temperance Melodrama on the Nineteenth-Century Stage

Produced by the master entertainer P. T. Barnum, a melodrama about the dangers of alcohol was the first show to run for a hundred performances in New York City.
"We are the Spirit Rappers," 2016, By Amy Friend.

The Weight of Family History

It’s never been easier to piece together a family tree. But what if it brings uncomfortable facts to light?
Photo of Jack Kerouac, 1956

Jack Kerouac’s Journey

For "On the Road"’s author, it was a struggle to write, then a struggle to live with its fame. “My work is found, my life is lost,” he wrote.
Michikinikwa ("Little Turtle") statue by Douglas Hyde.

Native Prohibition in the Federal Courts

Over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Congress enacted several laws restricting the sale of alcohol to Native Americans.
Vintage drawing of a Victorian-era drugstore

Was Edgar Allan Poe a Habitual Opium User?

While Poe was likely using opium, the efforts to keep him quiet suggest that he was also drinking.
Drawing of a CIA agent and a Judy sex doll.

Trickster, Traitor, Dummy, Doll

How the CIA tried to trick the Soviets with sex dolls (but ultimately got screwed).
Woman holding a poster that says "ABORTION". AP Images

The Roe Baby

After decades of keeping her identity a secret, Jane Roe’s child has chosen to talk about her life.
Carrie Nation

Carrie Nation Spent the Last Decade of Her Life Violently Destroying Bars. She Had Her Reasons. 

Nobody was listening, so she brought some rocks.
The writer (seen here in a picture from the eighteen-eighties) hid his own life story.

Are All Short Stories O. Henry Stories?

The writer’s signature style of ending—a final, thrilling note—has the touch of magic that distinguishes the form at its best.
A diagram of the phases of the Moon.

Man-Bat and Raven: Poe on the Moon

A new book recovers the reputation Poe had in his own lifetime of being a cross between a science writer, a poet, and a man of letters.
Tent next to a camper vehicle
partner

Solving Homelessness Requires Getting the Problem Right

Decades of stigmatizing and trying to police the homeless have perpetuated the problem.
Artistic collage of black leaders surrounded by images associated with prohibition.

The Forgotten History of Black Prohibitionism

We often think of the temperance movement as driven by white evangelicals set out to discipline Black Americans and immigrants. That history is wrong.
Headshot of William Faulkner

‘A Land Where the Dead Past Walks’

Faulkner’s chroniclers have to reconcile the novelist’s often repellent political positions with the extraordinary meditations on race, violence, and cruelty in his fiction.
A house.

Poe in the City

Peeples helps us to see that Poe’s imagination was stoked by his external surroundings as well as by his interior life.

Joseph McCarthy and the Force of Political Falsehoods

McCarthy never sent a single “subversive” to jail, but, decades later, the spirit of his conspiracy-mongering endures.

Stories in the Shine

"Moonshine" is now a big thing in the liquor biz. But it takes a visit to West Virginia to get a sense of the complex stories in every barrel.

A Complete Halt to the Liquor Traffic: Drink and Disease in the 1918 Epidemic

In Philadelphia, authorities faced a familiar challenge: to protect public health while maintaining individuals' rights to act, speak, and assemble freely.

Birmingham’s ‘Fifth Girl’

Sarah Collins Rudolph survived the 1963 church bombing that killed her sister and three other girls. She's still waiting on restitution and an apology.

The Broken Road of Peggy Wallace Kennedy

All white Southerners live with the sins of their fathers. But what if your dad was one of the most famous segregationists in history?

How America Became “A City Upon a Hill”

The rise and fall of Perry Miller.

Perhaps the World Ends Here

Climate disaster at Wounded Knee.

To Evade Pre-Prohibition Drinking Laws, New Yorkers Created the World's Worst Sandwich

It was everywhere at the turn of the 20th century. It was also inedible.

The Black Radical You’ve Never Heard Of

T. Thomas Fortune changed Black History, and seems to have been forgotten.
Anti-Catholic riot in Philadelphia in 1844

Lewis Levin Wasn't Cool

The first Jewish member of Congress was a virulent nativist and anti-immigration troll who ended his life in an insane asylum.
Richard Nixon

What Happens When There’s a Madman in the White House?

“When the president does it, that means it is not illegal.”

Annotating the First Page of the Navajo-English Dictionary

“It is one thing to play dress-up, to imitate pronunciations and understanding; it is another thing to think or dream or live in a language not your own.”

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