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Richard Jean So and the cover of his book "Redlining Culture"

The History of Publishing Is a History of Racial Inequality

A conversation with Richard Jean So about combining data and literary analysis to understand how the publishing industry came to be dominated by white writers. 
A collage of significant people from the time like the Beatles and Elvis.

How Americans Re-Learned to Think After World War II

In ‘The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War,’ Louis Menand explores the poetry, music, painting, dance and film that emerged during the Cold War.
Painting of a couple kissing under a broomstick

Broomstick Weddings and the History of the Atlantic World

From Kentucky to Wales and all across the Atlantic, the enslaved and downtrodden got married – by leaping over a broom. Why?

How Aztecs Told History

For the warriors and wanderers who became the Aztec people, truth was not singular and history was braided from many voices.

The Defender of Differences

Three new books consider the life, and impact, of Franz Boas, the "father of American cultural anthropology."

Janis Joplin, the Mistaken Icon of the Counterculture

The counterculture dictum to “turn on, tune in, drop out” did not quite capture Janis’s philosophy to “get it while you can.”
The cover of Cynthia A. Kierner's "Inventing Disaster," which depicts a shipwreck during a storm.

On Inventing Disaster

The culture of calamity from the Jamestown Colony to the Johnstown Flood.
African-American cowboys in Bonham, Texas, circa 1913

The Real Texas

What is Texas? Should we even think about so large and diverse a place as having an essence that can be distilled?

Reading in an Age of Catastrophe

A review of George Hutchinson's "Facing the Abyss: American Literature and Culture in the 1940s."
Places of origin for early Eastern Mediterranean immigrants. The dot size reflects the relative number of immigrants.

“Like A Wolf Who Fell Upon Sheep”: Early Lebanese Immigrants and Religion in America

For some Lebanese immigrants, religion was a comfort, providing a sense of home in an new world. For others, it was a constant reminder of what was left behind.

Here Is a Human Being

The Spotify and Ancestry partnership proposes to entertain users based on the narrowest possible conception of who they are.
Head coach Tom Landry of the Dallas Cowboys, surrounded by his team.

How Football Coaches Became the Vanguard of American Conservatism

Coaches have long sacralized the gridiron, extolling it alongside faith, family and the military as a setting stone of the social order.

How the Midlife Crisis Came to Be 

The midlife crisis went from an obscure psychological theory to a ubiquitous phenomenon.
Farmers haying.

Remembering the ‘Spooky Wisdom’ of Our Agrarian Past

For millennia, humans have followed specific patterns passed down by their forbears without always knowing why.
A painting entitled "The First Thanksgiving, 1621" by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris (ca. 1932).

The Dark Side of Nice

American niceness is the absolute worst thing to ever happen in human history.

Why Irish America Is Not Evergreen

Thanks to federal immigration policies, immigration from Ireland has all but dried up.
Book cover of "What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia."

Appalachia Isn’t Trump Country

A region that outsiders love to imagine but can’t seem to understand.
Still from Dirty Dancing.

In the Dark All Katz Are Grey: Notes on Jewish Nostalgia

Searching for where I belong, I find myself cobbling together a mongrel Judaism—half-remembered and contradictory and all mine.

The Mythical Whiteness of Trump Country

"Hillbilly Elegy" has been used to explain the 2016 election, but its logic is rooted in a dangerous myth about race in Appalachia.
Illustration of Elvis Presley and Big Mama Thornton

The Question of Cultural Appropriation

It’s more helpful to think about exploitation and disrespect than to define cultural “ownership.”

How America’s Obsession With Hula Girls Almost Wrecked Hawai’i

Popularized images of female hula dancers have deviated far from their origins and perpetuated stereotypes.
Boy carrying a live turkey over his shoulder.
partner

No, Thanks

The Thanksgiving meal we consider traditional would have likely disgusted the Pilgrims. What would early Americans have eaten?
Kids and adults free dancing.

Camille A. Brown: A Visual History of Social Dance in 25 Moves

Why do we dance? African-American social dances started as a way for enslaved Africans to keep cultural traditions alive and retain a sense of inner freedom.
Engraving of Hawaiian high chief Ka‘iana

When Hawaii Was Ruled by Shark-Like Gods

19th century Hawai‘i attracted traders, entrepreneurs, and capitalists, who displaced, a flourishing and elaborate culture.
Christopher Columbus

Man of the Year

A review of Columbus's impact on the political, economic, and religious effects within the Renaissance period of Europe and the beginning of global exploration.
A map of the United States divided into regions.

A Balkanized Federation

Without a shared civic narrative – the pursuit of liberal democratic self-government – the rival regional cultures of the United States agree on very little.
Family gathering around a christamas tree wearing fancy clothing.

Silent Night, Political Night: Christmas Films in Cold War America

Christmas films like to pretend they’re harmless seasonal comfort, but history says otherwise: postwar American cinema used Christmas to negotiate conformity.
Portrait of Benjamin Franklin reading.

Benjamin Franklin’s Experiments

The mindset Franklin demonstrated in his scientific work helps us understand his political accomplishments.
A woman stands next to a Christmas tree and two feeding horses

Silent Night?

How German immigrants brought Christmas celebrations to the United States.
Marty Reisman playing table tennis with the ball in the air.

The Real Marty Supreme

Marty Reisman, a brilliant, hustling ping-pong showman, rose from NYC clubs to global fame, clashed with officials, defied the sponge era, and left a legend.

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