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Illustration of a mid-life crisis by Ruth Basagoitia. A man looking into the mirror imagining a cooler version of himself.

Climacteric!

Taking seriously the midlife crisis.
by Trevor Quirk via The Hedgehog Review on March 1, 2022
A picture of an eerie dark house.

This House Is Still Haunted: An Essay In Seven Gables

A spectre is haunting houses—the spectre of possession.
by Adam Fales via Dilettante Army on February 15, 2022
Two pool chairs next to an indoor pool decorated to look like a tropical island beach.

Deceptively Bright, in an Up and Coming Area

Private bunkers and the people who build them.
by Will Wiles via Literary Review on July 1, 2020
Man wearing a red Hawaiian shirt and sunglasses rides a big yellow motorcycle.

How Feminists Invented the Male Midlife Crisis

Because most tales and treatises about this near-cliché of midlife crisis center on men, you might be misled to think they have nothing to do with women’s lives.
by Susanne Schmidt via Zócalo Public Square on June 1, 2018
World Trade Center towers burning on 9/11.

The Righteous Community: Legacies of the War on Terror

A new book traces how "the wet dream of an ageing militarist has become a fundamental force driving American foreign policy."
by Jackson Lears via London Review of Books on July 24, 2025

‘Great Enough to Blow Any City Off the Map’: On Site at the First Nuclear Explosion

The men who set off the nuclear age tell the tale in their own words.
by Garrett M. Graff via Politico Magazine on July 18, 2025

Why America Got a Warfare State, Not a Welfare State

How FDR invented national security, and why Democrats need to move on from it.
by Samuel Moyn via The New Republic on June 26, 2025
Painting of a person doing arithemetic.
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Solve for AI

What the history of the pocket calculator reveals about the future of AI in classrooms.
by Bronwen Everill via HNN on April 30, 2025
Patrick Henry giving a speech to a crowd of Virginians.

What Spurred the South to Join the American Revolution?

How a dispute with a Scottish lord over westward expansion, gunpowder, and the future of enslaved labor made the southern colonies’ embrace the radical cause.
by Andrew Lawler via Smithsonian on April 4, 2025
Shots from various conspiracy films of the 20th century.

The Life and Death of Conspiracy Cinema

Why did Hollywood lose interest in making paranoid thrillers? Was it a change in the culture? Or a change in the marketplace?
by T. M. Brown via The Nation on March 31, 2025
Depictions of possible causes of apocalypse through war, disaster, and climate change.

Apocalypse, Constantly

Humans love to imagine their own demise.
by Adam Kirsch via The Atlantic on December 31, 2024
Jimmy, Rosalynn, and Amy Carter at the Baptist church in Plains, Georgia, 1976.

How Jimmy Carter Lost Evangelical Christians to the Right

The Baptist Georgia governor won evangelical Christian voters in the 1976 presidential election. Next time around, those voters changed sides—for the long haul.
by Chris Lehmann via The Nation on December 30, 2024
Photo illustration of Luigi Mangione and John Dillinger.

Why the CEO Shooter Makes the Perfect American Folk Hero

Our country has a long history of admiring particular acts of violence.
by Elliott Gorn via Slate on December 18, 2024
Rep. Stephen Horn, examines a chart showing his grades for each agency's progress on the Y2K computer problem.
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What to Know About Y2K, Before You Watch 'Y2K'

The Year 2000 computer problem continues to nag at us 25 years later.
by Zachary Loeb via Made By History on December 18, 2024
A medieval drawing of a stork.
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Exit, Pursued by a Stork

When the 1930 Hays Code banned pregnancy in film, birds took over the business of birth.
by Victoria Sturtevant via HNN on December 17, 2024
Illustration of an octopus with a "no talking" symbol, with its tentacles around the globe.

How Cancel Culture Panics Ate the World

A set of peculiarly American anxieties has spread across continents.
by Samuel P. Catlin via The New Republic on November 25, 2024
Netanyahu, Trump, Orban, Modi.

The Reactionary Bind

In assessing the rise of the global anti-democracy movement, the United States must look inward as well as outward.
by Kim Phillips-Fein via Democracy Journal on October 21, 2024
An old, crumbling Victorian house with figures from horror, including Toni Collette in Hereditary, a zombie, Edgar Allen Poe, and Stephen King.

American Horror Stories

It just might be the great American art form. You can thank the residents of Salem for that.
by Laura J. Miller via Slate on October 19, 2024
Advertisement promoting cocaine toothache drops, 1889.

An Undulating Thrill

Once lauded as a wonder of the age, cocaine soon became the object of profound anxieties. What happened?
by Douglas Small via Aeon on October 4, 2024
Photographs of historian Zachary Schrag and his father Philip Schrag in front of a Nuclear War plan background

Two Generations of Nuclear Hopes and Nuclear Fears

A conversation with historian Zachary Schrag and his father Philip Schrag about their multi-generational encounters with nuclear threats.
by Alex Wellerstein via Doomsday Machines on October 4, 2024
Cover of the 1973 report "Computers, Records, and the Rights of Citizens."

60 Years Ago, Congress Warned Us About the Surveillance State. What Happened?

The same legal and cultural struggles will await the next critical infrastructural technology, and the next.
by Jennifer Holt via The MIT Press Reader on September 27, 2024
A newspaper headline that reads "Ask Congress' Ban on Fake Pictures: White Slaver's Photograph Taken Apparently with President Taft Arouses Senator.""

The 1912 War on Fake Photos

Fake photographs of the US president sparked calls for regulation of analog photo editing.
by Louis Anslow via Pessimists Archive on September 24, 2024
Police officer in front of a playground and school.

The Historical Precedents to Trump’s Attacks on Haitian Immigrants

An expert on white nationalism explains how such demonizing rhetoric incubates and spreads—and what sets this particular episode apart.
by Kathleen Belew, Isaac Chotiner via The New Yorker on September 18, 2024
Illustration by Joanne Imperio / The Atlantic. Sources: Bettmann / Getty; Heritage Art / Getty; NY Daily News Archive / Getty.

What a 100-Year-Old Trial Reveals About America

A new book on the famed 1920s court case traces a long-simmering culture war—and the fear that often drives both sides.
by John Kaag via The Atlantic on August 29, 2024
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An Early Case of Impostor Syndrome

Why were so many early European books laden with self-deprecation? Blame genre conventions.
by Katherine Churchill via HNN on August 27, 2024
Crowd marches against high inflation and unemployment in 1973.

What Would Studs Terkel Make of 'Essential Workers'?

What American workers have lost since 1974 — and how some are getting it back.
by Robert Hennelly via Village Voice on August 9, 2024
Edmund Muskie with a concerned expression, next to a globe.

The Lost History of What Americans Knew About Climate Change in the 1960s

It wasn’t just scientists who were worried, but Congress, the White House, and even Sports Illustrated, newly unearthed documents show.
by Kate Yoder via Grist on August 5, 2024
Zdeněk Koubek's ID card.

Discrimination Against Trans Olympians Has Roots in Nazi Germany

1934 world champion runner Zdenek Koubek, boxer Imane Khelif, and how far we haven’t come on gender in sports.
by Michael Waters, Alex Abad-Santos via Vox on August 1, 2024
A collection of supplies inside of a fallout shelter.

Nine Hot Weeks, with Misgivings

Cataloguing basement fallout shelters in the summer of 1967.
by Monte Davis via 3 Quarks Daily on July 16, 2024
Two women protesting Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh

Disposable Heroes

Christine Blasey Ford’s memoir captures the hazards of “coming forward.”
by Moira Donegan via Bookforum on July 2, 2024
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