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How the Midlife Crisis Came to Be 

The midlife crisis went from an obscure psychological theory to a ubiquitous phenomenon.
by Pamela Druckerman via The Atlantic on May 29, 2018
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.
by Gracy Olmstead via The American Conservative on April 23, 2018
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.
by D. Berton Emerson via Los Angeles Review of Books on April 22, 2018

Why Irish America Is Not Evergreen

Thanks to federal immigration policies, immigration from Ireland has all but dried up.
by Sadhbh Walshe via New York Review of Books on March 16, 2018
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.
by Elizabeth Catte, Regan Penaluna via Guernica on March 7, 2018
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.
by Samuel Ashworth via Hazlitt on February 23, 2018

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.
by Elizabeth Catte via Boston Review on November 7, 2017
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.”
by Briahna Joy Gray via Current Affairs on September 6, 2017

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.
by Lisa Hix via Collectors Weekly on March 22, 2017
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.
by Camille A. Brown via TED on June 1, 2016
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.
by Patrick Vinton Kirch via New York Review of Books on December 3, 2015
Frank Matsura photograph: a staged scene of a Native American man using a rifle to hold up men playing cards.

How Photographer Frank S. Matsura Challenged White America’s Hegemonic View of the West

On the groundbreaking work of the Japanese photographer who made Washington state his home.
by Glen Mimura via Literary Hub on September 11, 2025
Two matcha drinks.

Green Gruel? Pea Soup? What Westerners Thought of Matcha When They Tried It for the First Time

‘Matcha mania’ shows no signs of slowing, pushing supply chains to the brink. It’s marked quite the rise for a drink long met with skepticism in the West.
by Rebecca Corbett via The Conversation on September 3, 2025
Collage of photos of Lionel Trilling.

Lionel Trilling and the Limits of Crisis-Thought

Lionel Trilling defends humanism amid crisis culture, warning that obsessing over evil can erode the self and our capacity for moral and creative agency.
by Sam Gee via The Hedgehog Review on September 3, 2025
John McCain stands in a crowd shaking hands in a Ukrainian city.

How Decades of Folly Led to War in Ukraine

For decades, US hostility towards Russia and continued NATO encroachment ever further into Eastern Europe have laid the groundwork for the current crisis.
by Michael A. Reynolds via Compact on August 15, 2025
Donald Trump, flanked by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and others, shows executive order restarting the Presidential Fitness Test

What’s Behind Trump’s New (Old) Physical-Fitness Test?

He misrepresented the history of the gym-class test. I know because I served on the council that helped modernize it.
by Mark Hertling via The Bulwark on August 4, 2025
A policeman stoops down next to a roulette wheel and writes on a clipboard.

The Engines and Empires of New York City Gambling

As plans are laid for a new casino, one can trace, through four figures, a history of rivalry and excess, rife with collisions of character and crime.
by Adam Gopnik via The New Yorker on August 4, 2025
Black and white photograph of Claude McKay

Letters from Claude McKay

Correspondence about writing, travel, and friendship, from 1926 through 1929.
by Claude McKay via The Paris Review on July 25, 2025
Thomas Kinkade

The Painter of the Right

Thomas Kinkade’s paintings show conservatives a world they have already won.
by Sarah Jones via Dissent on July 16, 2025
Images of historical figures including Bejamin Franklin and Albert Einstein are overlaid on a green and white background.

Who’ll Be in Trump’s Hero Garden? There Are a Few Surprises.

The list of nearly 250 includes the famous, the obscure and, in some cases, the intentionally controversial.
by Bonnie Berkowitz, Hannah Dormido, Kati Perry via Washington Post on July 15, 2025
Painting of the Bay of San Francisco, by Eduard Hildebrandt.

Mark Twain, the Californian

In 1864 San Francisco, Twain found hardship, Bohemia, and his voice—transforming from local reporter to rising literary force.
by Ben Tarnoff via Lapham’s Quarterly on July 4, 2025
Abandoned church in Coaldale, Pennsylvania, with an American flag hanging upside down over its door.

The Decline and Fall of Christianity in America

If we imagine religion as a technology, argues Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith, we can better see the cause of its decline: obsolescence.
by Daniel N. Gullotta via The Bulwark on July 1, 2025
A group of workers in hard hats walk through the shallow water of one of the Panama Canal's locks.

‘The Canal Is Ours’

Trump’s threats to take control of the Panama Canal have precipitated a struggle over the country’s sovereignty.
by Miriam Pensack via New York Review of Books on June 28, 2025
Irving Thalberg and his wife, with Louis Mayer.

The Wizard Behind Hollywood’s Golden Age

How Irving Thalberg helped turn M-G-M into the world’s most famous movie studio—and gave the film business a new sense of artistry and scale.
by Adam Gopnik via The New Yorker on June 9, 2025
Jewish activists hold Passover Seder outside ICE headquarters in New York City to demand an end to Israel's war on Gaza.

The Past, Present, and Future of Left Jewish Identity

Jewish-led Palestine solidarity demonstrations are part of a long history of Jewish identity being bound up in leftist politics.
by Benjamin Balthaser, Shane Burley via Jacobin on June 8, 2025
A student protest at Gallaudet University.

A Striking Moment in American Activism

A new documentary revisits a pivotal week at Gallaudet University in 1988.
by John Hendrickson via The Atlantic on May 23, 2025
The all seeing eye reveals that the American flag is melting.

America’s Broken Commonwealth

The nation’s founding myth was based on faith and solidarity – but it also contained the roots of today’s democratic crisis.
by Rowan Williams via New Statesman on May 22, 2025
Avocados

Why Are We So Obsessed With Avocados?

Why are avocados everywhere?
by Sarah Allaback, Monique F. Parsons via Literary Hub on May 21, 2025
Old man and young boy.

The Perils of Generational Thinking

By assigning personal attributes to birth cohort, generationism tends to undermine personal responsibility.
by Richard Gunderman via Law & Liberty on May 16, 2025
John C. Calhoun

The Prelude to the Civil War

“Only two states wanted a civil war—Massachusetts and South Carolina.”
by Hunter DeRensis via The American Conservative on May 5, 2025
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