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Nancy Reagan standing behind a railing.

Nancy Reagan’s Real Role in the AIDS Crisis

The former first lady fought the conservative Reagan administration in an attempt to get her husband to pay more attention to the deadly pandemic.
Henry Adams and his wife, Clover Adams at Wenlock Abbey, England, 1873

A Posthumous Life

Family blessings are a curse, or they can be. The life of Henry Adams explained in his book Education.
Black and white photo of poet John Berryman having a beer and a conversation with a group of men

‘The Roots of Our Madness’

John Berryman's Dream Songs made explicit the racialization of American poetry's turn—and the whiteness of lyric tradition.
Armistice Day celebration with a large crowd of people

People Gave Up on Flu Pandemic Measures a Century Ago When They Tired of Them – And Paid a Price

At the first hint the virus was receding, people pushed to get life back to normal. Unfortunately another surge of the disease followed.
Exhibit

Living With the Dead

From rituals of mourning to spirit mediums and ghost stories, Americans' varied attempts to connect with those who have gone before us.

profile illustration of human nervous system against black background

The Mystery of ‘Harriet Cole’

Whose body was harvested to create a spectacular anatomical specimen, and did that person know they would be on display more than a century later?
Vienna’s plague column; the AIDS quilt; Mexico City’s Memorial to Victims of Violence; Berlin’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

How Will We Remember This?

A COVID memorial will have to commemorate shame and failure as well as grief and bravery.
Richard Allen (above) and Absalom Jones' "A Refutation". book cover

How the Politics of Race Played Out During the 1793 Yellow Fever Epidemic

Free blacks cared for those infected with yellow fever even as their own lives were imperiled.
Roundabout at the George Floyd memorial, at the intersection of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue.

George Floyd and a Community of Care

At E. 38th Street and Chicago Avenue in Minneapolis, a self-organizing network explores what it means to construct and maintain a public memorial.
The ocean

Chemical Warfare’s Home Front

Since World War I we’ve been solving problems with dangerous chemicals that introduce new problems.
Cartoon of Philip Roth at a typewriter, with the typescript turning into himself looking back at him

The Possessed

Joshua Cohen imagines how Philip Roth would review his own biographer.

Which Generation Controls the Senate?

A visual breakdown of the U.S. Senate by age.
A noose hanging in front of the Capitol.

Why America Loves the Death Penalty

A new book frames this country’s tendency toward state-sanctioned murder as a unique cultural inheritance.
Maggie and Kate Fox

Why Did Everyone in the 19th Century Think They Could Talk to the Dead?

Kevin Dann on the spiritualists of New York City and beyond.
A cemetery.

New Orleans: Vanishing Graves

Holt Cemetery has been filled to capacity many times over; each gravesite has been used for dozens of burials.
A covered wagon in the grass.

The Deadly Temptation of the Oregon Trail Shortcut

Dying of dysentery was just the beginning.
A plaster cast of an early 1900s jack-o’-lantern, known as a “ghost turnip.”

The Twisted Transatlantic Tale of American Jack-o’-Lanterns

Celtic rituals, tricks of nature, and deals with the devil have all played a part in creating this iconic symbol of Halloween.

The Unfinished Story of Emmett Till’s Final Journey

Till was murdered 65 years ago. Sites of commemoration across the Mississippi Delta still struggle with what’s history and what’s hearsay.
Influenza newspaper report

What I Learned by Following the 1918-19 ‘Spanish’ Flu Pandemic in (Almost) Real Time

Once the COVID crisis is over, it may take us quite some time to process and psychologically recover from this tragedy.
Cover of "Little Lindy is Kidnapped"

We Had Witnessed an Exhibition

A new book about the Lindbergh baby kidnapping focuses on the role played by the media.
Two drawings, one of a woman on the left and one of a man on the right

Minorcans, New Smyrna, and the American Revolution in East Florida

The little-known story of the laborers who became pawns in a Floridian struggle during the American Revolution.

Charles Averill’s The Cholera-Fiend: Fiction for a Pandemic

The 1850 novel reveals disturbing continuities between the 19th century cholera pandemics and global health crises today.

Counting the Dead at Hiroshima and Nagasaki

How many people really died because of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings? It’s complicated. There are at least two credible answers.
The USS Constitution glides through Boston Harbor.
partner

Early Americans Knew Better Than President Trump How To Prioritize Health

A public uprising forced Boston to prioritize fighting smallpox over the economy in 1792.

On the Uses of History for Staying Alive

Reflections on reading Nietzsche in Alaska in the early days of Covid-19.

How Is a Disaster Made?

Studying Hurricane Katrina as a discrete event is studying a fiction.
An artist's rendition of a ghost.

The Indebted Dead

Tracing the history of the Grateful Dead folktale and the evolving obligations of being alive.

A Different Kind of Expert

An 1813 correspondence demonstrates that medical expertise in early America was not limited to men or physicians.
Gordon Park's photograph of law enforcement officers kicking in a door

When Crime Photography Started to See Color

Six decades ago, Gordon Parks, Life magazine’s first black photographer, revolutionized what a crime photo could look like.
A drawing of a moose skeleton in front of a wilderness scene.

Flu in the Arctic: Influenza in Alaska, 1918

A graphic essay about the brutal toll taken by the epidemic on indigenous communities in Alaska.
Drawing of two angels flying above Longfellow

What Is There to Love About Longfellow?

He was the most revered poet of his day. It’s worth trying to figure out why.

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