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A woman peering into the cave of Sarah Bishop c. 1900.

The Curious History of New England’s Hermit Tourism

From Revolutionary War-era recluses to 1920s roadside attractions, meet the solitary figures who turned isolation into a destination.
by Ryan Shea via Atlas Obscura on June 13, 2025
Left: Headshot of Shoichi Yokoi in uniform Right: Yokoi sobbing in his wheelchair when he returns to Japan in 1972

The Japanese WWII Soldier Who Refused to Surrender for 27 Years

Unable to bear the shame of being captured as a prisoner of war, Shoichi Yokoi hid in the jungles of Guam until January 1972.
by Meilan Solly via Smithsonian on January 21, 2022
Subject in sensory deprivation in 1957 isolation study

American Solitude

Notes toward a history of isolation.
by Jeffrey Mathias via Perspectives on History on February 17, 2021

The Revolutionary Thoreau

Generations of readers have chosen to emphasize Thoreau's spiritual communion with Nature, but Walden begins with trenchant critique of “progress.”
by R. H. Lossin via New York Review of Books on September 4, 2020
A walkman and a headphone set

The Walkman, Forty Years On

The gadget that taught the world to socially distance.
by Matt Alt via The New Yorker on June 29, 2020

How the 1918 Pandemic Frayed Social Bonds

The influenza pandemic did long-lasting damage to relationships in some American communities. Could the mistrust have been prevented?
by Noah Y. Kim via The Atlantic on March 31, 2020
Deportees walk in a line while coordinators stand nearby in reflective yellow vests.

The Sordid History of Offshoring Migrants

Trump is only the latest to embrace a costly and immoral tactic.
by David Scott FitzGerald via Foreign Affairs on July 10, 2025
Shulamith Firestone, 1997.

When the Battle's Lost and Won

Shulamith Firestone and the burdens of prophecy.
by Audrey Wollen via Harper’s on March 28, 2025
Black and white photograph of a lake.

Not So Close

For Henry David Thoreau, it is only as strangers that we can see each other as the bearers of divinity we really are.
by Ashley C. Barnes via Commonweal on March 18, 2025
Hawaiian landscape.

The Hawaiians Who Want Their Nation Back

In 1893, a U.S.-backed coup overthrew the Islands’ sovereign government. What does America owe Hawai‘i now?
by Adrienne LaFrance via The Atlantic on December 11, 2024
A USPS postal worker pulling a cart of mail through a snow storm.

How Mailmen Saved Rural America

Amazon will never be neighbourly.
by Jeff Bloodworth via UnHerd on November 25, 2024
An old, crumbling Victorian house with figures from horror, including Toni Collette in Hereditary, a zombie, Edgar Allen Poe, and Stephen King.

American Horror Stories

It just might be the great American art form. You can thank the residents of Salem for that.
by Laura J. Miller via Slate on October 19, 2024
State Correctional Institution at Camp Hill Administration Building, with a restricted entrance sign in front of its doors.

The Porous Prison

How incarcerated people have become separated from American society.
by Charlotte Rosen, Reiko Hillyer via Public Books on October 3, 2024
Indiana Dunes National Park.

Inside the Fight to Save the Indiana Dunes, One of America’s Most Vulnerable National Parks

Caught between steel mills, suburbs and a hard place, the 15,000-acre site is a fantasia of biodiversity—and a case study for hard-fought conservation.
by Eli Wizevich via Smithsonian on July 25, 2024
A pile of hand-written zines in colorful designs.

Queer Teenage Feminists on the Printed Page, 1973 to 2023

How lesbian teenagers forged community bonds and found connection through magazines.
by Kera Lovell via Nursing Clio on April 10, 2024
Painting of Emily Dickinson writing at a desk outside.

Eternity Only Will Answer

Funny, convivial, chatty—a new edition of Emily Dickinson's letters upends the myth of her reclusive genius. 
by Maya C. Popa via Poetry Foundation on April 8, 2024
Alexis de Tocqueville.

American Nightmares

Wang Huning and Alexis de Tocqueville’s dark vision of the future.
by Tanner Greer via Scholar's Stage on March 28, 2024
U.S. Ambassador Daniel Moynihan discusses violence in the Middle East at the U.N. Security Council
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Changing Views on Israel Isolating the U.S. at the U.N.

Americans have been isolated at the U.N. on Israel for a half century — but that used to prompt fierce debate.
by Sean T. Byrnes via Made By History on January 18, 2024
Black and white portrait of Jones Very

The Voice of Unfiltered Spirit

In the poetry of Jones Very, whom his contemporaries considered “eccentric” and “mad," the self is detached from everything by an intoxicated egoism.
by Brenda Wineapple via New York Review of Books on January 18, 2024
Prison hallway

The Silent Treatment: Solitary Confinement’s Unlikely Origins

Characterised today by the noise of banging, buzzers, and the cries of inmates, solitary confinement was originally developed from Quaker ideas.
by Jane Brox via The Public Domain Review on October 25, 2023
Ted Kaczynski, before and after terror attacks, with writings

The Tragedy of the Unabomber

Ted Kaczynski’s criticisms of environmental destruction and out-of-control technology were incisive, but his terroristic methods had no chance of solving those problems.
by Alex Skopic via Current Affairs on June 22, 2023
A cut out from the magazine New Masses with the headline "For College Student H.H.C," pasted over a photo montage of an archive.

“H.H.C.”: The Story of a Queer Life—Glimpsed, Lost, and Finally Found

My hunt for one man across the lonely expanse of the queer past ended in a place I never expected.
by Aaron Lecklider via Slate on April 24, 2023
Donellia Chives, a trustee of Penn Center.

White Gold from Black Hands: The Gullah Geechee Fight for a Legacy after Slavery

Descendants of the west Africans who picked the cotton that made Manchester rich are struggling to keep their distinct culture alive.
by DeNeen L. Brown via The Guardian on March 30, 2023
An all-women team of aquanauts: Ann Hartline, Sylvia Earle, Renate True, Alina Szmant, and Peggy Lucas Bond.

The Forgotten Women Aquanauts of the 1970s

These scientists spent weeks underwater doing research—and convincing NASA women could also go into space.
by Amy Crawford via Atlas Obscura on March 24, 2023
Painting of a city along a river, with a long dock and commerical ships

James Buchanan's 1832 Mission to the Tsar

The plight of Poland and the limits of America's revolutionary legacy in Jacksonian foreign policy.
by Derek Kane O'Leary via Age of Revolutions on March 6, 2023

The Country That Could Not Mourn

The Covid-19 pandemic has shown just how hard it is for Americans to grieve.
by Sarah Jaffe via The New Republic on September 23, 2022

Inventing Solitary

In 1790, Philadelphia opened the first American penitentiary, with the nation’s first solitary cells. Black people were disproportionately punished from the start.
by Samantha Melamed via Philadelphia Inquirer on June 8, 2022
Artwork of Hannah Arendt looking through the outline of a map of Ukraine.

Why We Should Read Hannah Arendt Now

"The Origins of Totalitarianism" has much to say about a world of rising authoritarianism.
by Anne Applebaum via The Atlantic on March 17, 2022
Spectrum of color from red to blue.

A Little Spectrum-y

What the autism diagnosis says about you.
by Emer Lucey via The Drift on January 20, 2022
Photograph of prison warden T. M. Osborne and two other men in a penitentiary hallway.
partner

Were Early American Prisons Similar to Today's?

A correctional officer’s history of 19th century prisons and modern-day parallels. From Sing Sing to suicide watch, torture treads a fine line.
by Charles Neal via JSTOR Daily on January 19, 2022
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