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A yuppie surrounded by money and luxury items.

When Yuppies Ruled

Defining a social type is a way of defining an era. What can the time of the young urban professional tell us about our own?
by Louis Menand via The New Yorker on July 22, 2024
Syntactic trees filled with words and numbers.

American Grammar: Diagraming Sentences in the 19th Century

A pre-history of the sentence diagrams that were once commonplace in the American classroom.
by Hunter Dukes via The Public Domain Review on June 19, 2024
A magnifying glass sitting on top of "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" by Thomas S. Kuhn.

What Was the “Paradigm Shift”?

When Thomas Kuhn coined the term, he wasn’t referring simply to “out of the box” thinking.
by Audra J. Wolfe via The New Republic on May 22, 2024
Groups of workers outside a St. Louis, Missouri factory.

How the Term “Hoosier” Became a Weapon in the Class War

In Indiana, “hoosier” is a badge of honor. In St Louis, it’s the nastiest insult around. The difference reveals the prejudice that breaks worker solidarity.
by Devin Thomas O’Shea via Jacobin on May 7, 2024
Jelly Roll Blues: Censored Songs & Hidden Histories

Jelly Roll Blues: Censored Songs & Hidden Histories

From the beginning of the recording industry, many voices have been suppressed and significant cultural history has been lost to prudery and censorship.
by Steve Provizer via Syncopated Times on April 1, 2024
Etching of friends playing a game of chess, dated to the nineteenth century.

Get Capitalists’ Grubby Hands Off Our Hobbies

Christian moralists long promoted hobbies as a way to occupy idle hands, bringing the work ethic into free time. Today hobbies risk turning into side hustles.
by Helmer Stoel via Jacobin on March 19, 2024
Spielberg and Henry Thomas in a scene on the set of E.T.

The Auteur of Fatherhood: How Steven Spielberg Recast American Masculinity

Steven Spielberg’s early films conjure all of his moviemaking magic to repair a world of lost dads.
by Phillip Maciak via The Yale Review on March 4, 2024
Illustration of "American" birds flying and holding American English words

When American Words Invaded the Greatest English Dictionary

Slips of paper with peculiar regional terms crossed the Atlantic to Oxford and into the pages of a 70-year lexicographical project.
by Sarah Ogilvie via The Wall Street Journal on November 10, 2023

What Even Is "Leadership"?

And why won't all the worst people stop talking about it?
by Charles Petersen via Making History on September 21, 2023
Artistic representation of a man using psychedelics. The man's head appears like a matryoshka doll.

Brains on Drugs

Between the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, drug use to expand one’s consciousness went from an intellectual pastime to an emblem of social decay.
by John Semley via The Baffler on June 14, 2023
“Words Have Power” exhibit displayed at Fort Pulaski National Monument.

Why I Haven’t Embraced the Terms “Forced Labor Camp” and “Enslaved Labor Camp” in My Work on Slavery

“Forced labor” conflates different forms of labor throughout history and minimizes the uniquely brutal conditions of chattel slavery.
by Nick Sacco via Exploring the Past on June 2, 2023
Brazilla Carroll Reece, Joseph McCarthy and Harry S. Truman with democratic donkeys in word bubbles.

The Real Origins of the “Democrat Party” Troll

We can’t blame Joe McCarthy for this one. (Though he was a fan.)
by Lawrence B. Glickman via Slate on January 21, 2023
Illustration of a happy Founder with flowers as eyes.

Happiness In America Isn’t What It Used to Be

"We have lost sight of some essential aspects of happiness that the founders clearly had in mind."
by Darrin M. McMahon via TIME on January 10, 2023
Painting of Yosemite Valley

How Place Names Impact The Way We See Landscape

Western landscapes and their names are stratified with personal memories, ancestral teachings, mythic events and colonial disturbances.
by B. 'Toastie' Oaster via High Country News on May 1, 2022
Couple kissing at the opening of the Berlin Wall

Has Neoliberalism Really Come to an End?

A conversation with historian Gary Gerstle about understanding neoliberalism as a bipartisan worldview and how the political order it ushered in has crumbled. 
by Gary Gerstle, Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins via The Nation on April 13, 2022
An image of red slave shackles.

Tracing the Ancestry of the Earliest Enslaved Ndongo People

A story born in blood.
by Clyde W. Ford via Literary Hub on April 8, 2022
Ketanji Brown Jackson speaking at a podium with Biden standing behind her.
partner

Why Supreme Court Confirmations Have Become So Bitter

The defeat of Robert Bork’s nomination to the Supreme Court in 1987 changed the way justices are confirmed today.
via Retro Report on March 17, 2022
1963 black and white photo of protesters marching for racial equality in Washington D.C.

Just Give Me My Equality

Amidst growing suspicion that equality talk is cheap, a new book explains where egalitarianism went wrong—and what it still has to offer.
by Teresa M. Bejan via Boston Review on February 7, 2022
Paul Robeson and other members of the Civil Rights Congress submit a report on police brutality and systemic racism against Black people, accusing the U.S. of genocide, to the United Nations.

70 Years Ago Black Activists Accused the U.S. of Genocide. They Should Have Been Taken Seriously.

The charges, while provocative, offer a framework to reckon with systemic racial injustice — past and present.
by Alex Hinton via Politico Magazine on December 26, 2021
A still from the film "The Manchurian Candidate," in which a military officer interrogates a nervous, sweating man.

Brainwashing Has a Grim History That We Shouldn’t Dismiss

Scientific research and historical accounts can help us identify and dissect the threat of ‘coercive persuasion.’
by Joel E. Dimsdale via Psyche on November 24, 2021
Benjamin Franklin reading

America’s Obsession With Self-Help

From “The Old Farmer’s Almanac” to “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” what do bestselling guides to self-improvement reveal about the United States?
by Chris Lehmann via The New Republic on July 2, 2021

Decolonize Hipsters

The history of hipsters is a not-so-secret history of race in the Atlantic world.
by Grégory Pierrot via Guernica on April 20, 2021
circulatory system diagram

A Brief History of "The System"

Tracing the twisting path of a resistance slogan, from the Nazis to the hippies to Trump.
by Jackson Arn via 3 Quarks Daily on October 19, 2020
An outline of the United States filled with black figures who are outlined by a continuous white line.

"Other": A Brief History of American Xenophobia

The United States often touts itself as a "nation of immigrants," but this obscures the real story.
via Densho: Japanese American Incarceration and Japanese Internment on July 11, 2020
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
Portrait of Anne Lister

The 19th Century Lesbian Made for 21st Century Consumption

Jeanna Kadlec considers Anne Lister, the center figure of HBO’s Gentleman Jack, and the influence of other preceding queer women.
by Jeanne Kadlec via Longreads on June 6, 2019
New York Times building.

The History of 'The New York Times' Stylebook

'The New York Times' was an early adopter of style guidelines.
by Merrill Perlman via Columbia Journalism Review on June 19, 2018

The Tools of Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley’s sixty-year love affair with the word “tool.”
by Moira Weigel via The New Yorker on April 11, 2018
Apple pie, apples, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

Apple Pie Is Not All That American

Neither apples nor the pie originally came from America, but Americans have made this dish their own
by Kat Eschner via Smithsonian on May 12, 2017
Library card catalog card reading "Forgetfulness: see memory."

Historical Amnesias: An Interview with Paul Connerton

“The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”
by Paul Connerton, Sina Najafi, Jeffery Kastner via Cabinet on June 30, 2011

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