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Some pumpkins.

Ain't I Some Pumpkins?

Soon after he was elected, Abraham Lincoln received a rather bizarre letter.
Fall/Winter 1957 Sears catalog page spread of men's work clothes.

Before Folding 30 Years Ago, the Sears Catalog Sold Some Surprising Products

The retail giant’s mail-order business reigned supreme for more than a century, offering everything from quack cures to ready-to-build homes.
Mural of Roberto Clemente on the side of the museum dedicated to him.

Erased and Forgotten Sports History In Pittsburgh’s Crossroads of the World

The brothers from Barbados who built Negro League stadiums, and community efforts to create historic markers for them.
Detail of atlas of the city of Boston, Boston Proper and Back Bay, Plate 9.

Building Blocks

An exhibition exploring the connections between the environment and social justice, using maps and visual materials.
Christmas lights and decor
partner

Christmas Lights — Brought to You By a Jew From the Muslim World

Jews from the Ottoman Empire pioneered the Christmas lights market a century ago — but nativism, antisemitism and islamophobia obscured this history.
Collage of yoga, palm tree, police tape

The Birth of a New Brand of Exercise Fetish

From Bikram yoga to Tae Bo, the 1990s exploded with exoticized consumer fitness products.
Vintage Levi's held in front of an auction crowd.

A Pair of 1880s Jeans Just Sold for $76k. Their Pocket Reveals a Complicated Piece of Levi’s History.

The vintage pair of jeans was pulled from a dusty abandoned mineshaft.
Quisqueya Bodega in Crown Heights

The NYC Bodega: A History of Violence and Resilience

Bodegas serve as lifelines and community centers, yet have faced heinous violence. Here is the story of the New York City bodega.
President Bill Clinton laughs after delivering remarks on welfare reform.

How the Democrats Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Free Market

In the 1990s, the New Democrats trusted corporations to do the right thing. The results were disastrous.
Utica, New York

How Utica Became a City Where Refugees Came to Rebuild

Utica became a refugee magnet by accident.
Book cover of Whole Earth, featuring an image of Stewart Brand backlit and walking through a door, encircled by the earth.

On Floating Upstream

Markoff’s biography of Stewart Brand notes that Brand’s ability to recognize and cleave to power explains a great deal of his career.
Fast food with the seal of the president on the containers.

How the State Created Fast Food

Because of consistent government intervention in the industry, we might call fast food the quintessential cuisine of global capitalism.
Donald Trump speaking at a meeting with small businesspeople at the White House on January 30, 2017.

Family Capitalism and the Small Business Insurrection

The increasingly militant right supports the private, unincorporated, and family-based versus the corporate, publicly traded, and shareholder-owned.
Black and white drawing of early 19th century naval vessels.

The Insurers’ Wars

When Thomas Jefferson’s administration was debating whether to declare war against Britain, it came up against America’s wealthy and influential marine underwriters.
A family photo shows Balqes Jassem with her late husband, Abdul Ameer Alwan, and their daughter, Aman Alwan, at home in Richardson, Tex. The older Alwan was an Iraqi painter who passed away in 2015. The family came to the United States as Iraqi refugees in 2007.

New Americans

Hundreds of thousands of Afghans and Iraqis displaced by war have settled in the U.S., their journeys spurred by tragedy and loss in the wake of 9/11.
Photo of California gold fragment found by John Sutter in 1848

A Pacific Gold Rush

On the roads and seas miners traveled to reach gold in the United States and Australia.
A woman posing with an elk she shot.

A Woman’s Intimate Record of Wyoming in the Early Twentieth Century

Lora Webb Nichols created and collected some twenty-four thousand negatives documenting life in her small town.
cheez-its

A Brief History of the Cheez-It

America's iconic orange cracker turns 100 this year.
Photograph of Prince's Hot Chicken restaurant superimposed over a photograph of an empty shopping center

Notes on Hot Chicken, Race, and Culinary Crossover

How does Black food go viral among white folks?
Peanuts, bagged and ready for transport, are stacked in pyramids at Kano, Northern Region, Nigeria, 1955.

After Slavery: How the End of Atlantic Slavery Paved a Path to Colonialism

Abolition in Africa brought longed-for freedoms, but also political turmoil, economic collapse and rising enslavement.
A collage of Black and Asian people with an upside down American flag in the background

How Racism and White Supremacy Fueled a Black-Asian Divide in America

After a recent surge in anti-Asian attacks, the narrative quickly turned to hostilities between Black and Asian American communities.
A walk-up customer at the door of a minister's marriage license booth in Elkton, Md. during the 1920-30s.

How Elkton Became the Marriage Capital of the East Coast

The story of one small Maryland town that became the Marriage Capital of the East Coast in the 20th century.
An illustration of a kid imagining going to space.

Selling the American Space Dream

The cosmic delusions of Elon Musk and Wernher von Braun.
Abandoned Howard Johnson's restaurant overgrown with vegetation.

Howard Johnson’s, Host of the Bygone Ways

For more than seven decades American roads were dotted with the familiar orange roof and blue cupola of the ubiquitous Howard Johnson’s restaurants and Motor Lodges.
A white picket fence

Why Does Everyone in America Think They’re Middle Class?

The “Middle Class Nation” and “American Exceptionalism” found each other late, and under specific circumstances.
Still from "The Baby Sitters Club" TV show.

The Baby-Sitters Club Is Ready to Teach a New Generation About Work

Locked-down parents will need an army of tween child-minders. Let "The Baby-Sitters Club" show them the way.

The Past and Future of Latinx Politics

Two new books look at the history of Latinx Democrats and Republicans and the role each will play in the future.
Abstract image of a wedge whose shading does not align with the shading in its context.

A Brief History of the Gig

The gig economy wasn’t built in a day.

When Was Toilet Paper Invented and What Did People Use Before?

As coronavirus becomes an ever-increasing threat to our lives, there seems to be one thing that people around the world cannot go without the most.
Texas oil wells.

Anointed with Oil: Evangelicals and the Petroleum Industry

On the outsized role that Christians have played in the oil business.

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