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George Washington on the cover of Alexis Coe's "You Never Forget Your First."

A New Book About George Washington Breaks All the Rules on How to Write About George Washington

A cheeky biography of the first president pulls no punches.

‘1917’ and the Trouble With War Movies

"Every film about war ends up being pro-war," Francois Truffaut once said.

The Asian-American Canon Breakers

Proudly embracing their role as outsiders, a group of writer-activists set out to create a cultural identity—and a literature—of their own.

A Brief History of Mostly Terrible Campaign Biographies

“No harm if true; but, in fact, not true.”

Nashville Contra Jaws, 1975

In their time, “Jaws” and “Nashville” were regarded as Watergate films, and both were in production as the Watergate disaster played its final act.

Death Proof

With ‘Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood,’ Tarantino slakes his thirst for nostalgia while playing with another piece of history.

Pulp Fiction Helped Define American Lesbianism

In the 50s and 60s, steamy novels about lesbian relationships, marketed to men, gave closeted women needed representation.

A Short History of Country Music’s Multicultural Mishmash

Or everything that came before Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus walked down that “Old Town Road.”

Rhiannon Giddens and What Folk Music Means

The roots musician is inspired by the evolving legacy of the black string band.
Still from a video game animation of a Black cowboy aiming a pistol at another.

‘Old Town Road’ and the History of Black Cowboys in America

A songwriter-historian weighs in on the controversy over Lil Nas X’s country-trap hit.
Painting of the mouth of a cave.

Down in the Hole: Outlaw Country and Outlaw Culture

Country music has often stood, as it were, with one foot in and one foot out of the cave.
Black-and-white television still of man in front of a row of masks of himself, lighting a cigarette for one of them.

Did the Creator of 'The Twilight Zone' Plagiarize Ray Bradbury?

Either way, Rod Serling definitely pissed him off.
Colorful illustration of Larry Norman, haloed by yellow.

The Unlikely Endurance of Christian Rock

The genre has been disdained by the church and mocked by secular culture. That just reassured practitioners that they were rebels on a righteous path.

Canon Fodder

Where's the country music on Pitchfork's Best Albums of the 1980s?
A portrait of a woman in an crime pamphlet labeled "the beautiful victim."

The Bloody History of the True Crime Genre

True Crime is having a renaissance with popular TV series and podcasts. But the history of the genre dates back much further.
Gram Parsons.

Nudie and the Cosmic American

The iconic fusion of country and rock in Gram Parsons' legacy.
Orson Welles

A Hundred Years of Orson Welles

He was said to have gone into decline, but his story is one of endurance—even of unlikely triumph.
Collage of gay film covers

Good Queers and Bad Queers

Myths are fed back as stereotypes and strawmen to divine some boundary for acceptability.
Science fiction landscape.

75 Years Ago, "The Martian Chronicles" Legitimized Science Fiction

On Ray Bradbury’s underappreciated classic.
Lt. Selfridge and Mr. Wright stepping into the Wright aeroplane at Fort Myer, Virginia.

Uh-Oh

“When you invent the plane, you also invent the plane crash.”
Mary MacLane.

“I Am Making the World My Confessor”: Mary MacLane, the Wild Woman from Butte

In 1902, a woman named Mary MacLane from Butte, Montana, became an international sensation after publishing a scandalous journal at the age of 19.
A portrait of Edgar Allen Poe.

The Most Overrated Writer in America

Do people really like Edgar Allen Poe?
A painting of a large camera on a film set, surrounded by green screens.

Casual Viewing

Why Netflix looks like that.
Soldiers sing at the end of the day in Vietnam, January 1968.
partner

The Soundtrack to Vietnam War History Isn’t Quite Historically Accurate

Why rock overtook every other genre to define our understanding of America at war.
Scene from "Smokey and the Bandit" of Burt Reynolds talking on a CB radio.

"A Long Way to Go and a Short Time to Get There"

In the 1970s, trucker films like "Smokey and the Bandit" celebrated rebellious, working-class solidarity and freedom, with complex politics at play.
National Book Award seal.

How Historical Fiction Redefined the Literary Canon

In contemporary publishing, novels fixated on the past rather than the present have garnered the most attention and prestige.
Taylor Swift performing on stage.

Has Pop Music Got Less Melodic? I’ve Immersed Myself in 70 Years of Hits – This is What I’ve Found

A new study claims that songs have become less complex. But the magic of these short, sharp tunes can’t be so easily distilled.
Jailhouse Rock (1957).

How Has Music Changed Since the 1950s?

A statistical analysis of how music composition evolved over time.
A collage of photographs of the cast and crew of "The Real World" over the show's logo.

How “The Real World” Created Modern Reality TV

The rules governing everything from “Big Brother” to “The Real Housewives” started three decades ago, with a radical experiment on MTV.
Charles Fort.

In Praise of the Paranormal Curiosity of Charles Fort, Patron Saint of Cranks

On the porous, ever-shifting boundaries between science and speculation.

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