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Magazine ad of raccoons playing computer games.

The Raccoons Who Made Computer Magazine Ads Great

In the 1980s and 1990s, PC Connection built its brand on a campaign starring folksy small-town critters. They’ll still charm your socks off.
by Harry McCracken via Technologizer on April 22, 2025
Illustrated J. Crew cover, showing a blonde white couple wearing "preppy' clothing sitting by a river; a young man's khaki shorts, boat shoes, and school books on a campus; a crew team on the water. Illustration by Nada Hayek.

J. Crew and the Paradoxes of Prep

By mass-marketing social aspiration, the brand toed the line between exclusivity and accessibility—and established prep as America’s visual vernacular.
by Hua Hsu via The New Yorker on March 20, 2023
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.
by Leo DeLuca via Smithsonian on January 26, 2023

Sears’s ‘Radical’ Past

How mail-order catalogues subverted the racial hierarchy of Jim Crow.
by Antonia Noori Farzan via Washington Post on October 16, 2018

The World’s Most Peculiar Company

How does Hammacher Schlemmer, famous for such eccentric products as the Navigable Water Park, continue to survive in the age of Amazon?
by Nick Greene via Chicago Magazine on August 1, 2018
Person holding a blonde American Girl doll and American Girl bag

All Dolled Up

How American Girl transformed the doll world—and why millennials love it so.
by Jayne Ross via The American Scholar on November 30, 2023
Collage of people in "preppy" clothing.

We’re All Preppy Now

How a style steeped in American elitism took over the world.
by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela via The New Republic on August 14, 2023
Fruitcake

The Magnificent History of the Maligned and Misunderstood Fruitcake

The polarizing dessert that people love to hate became a Christmas mainstay thanks, in part, to the U.S. Postal Service.
by Jeffrey Miller via The Conversation on December 17, 2021
Potato Head family
partner

Toys Are Ditching Genders for the Same Reason They First Took Them On

Why the Potato Heads are the latest toys becoming more inclusive.
by Paul Ringel via Made By History on March 2, 2021
Stan and Mardi Timm show off Johnson Smith novelties they’ve collected. Stan wears X-Ray Spex and holds a Tark Electric Razor. Mardi wears a sailor’s hat that says “Kiss Me Honey I Won’t Bite” and holds a Little Gem Lung Tester and Bust Developer.

Fun Delivered: World’s Foremost Experts on Whoopee Cushions and Silly Putty Tell All

The Timms provide the history behind their collection of 20th century mail-order novelty items.
by Lisa Hix via Collectors Weekly on March 17, 2020

Google Before the Invention of Google

What started the Information Age?
by John Markoff via Los Angeles Times on March 28, 2018

How Sears Industrialized, Suburbanized, and Fractured the American Economy

The iconic retail giant turned thrift into profit, but couldn’t keep pace with modern consumer culture.
by Vicki Howard via Zócalo Public Square on July 20, 2017
Portrait of Julius Rosenwald hanging on a wall.

Finding Philanthropy’s Forgotten Founder

Julius Rosenwald understood that charity is not just about giving, but about fixing the inequalities that make giving necessary.
by Darren Walker via The Atlantic on September 9, 2024
Grant Wood’s sister, Nan Wood Graham, and his dentist, Byron McKeeby, stand by the painting for which they had posed, “American Gothic.”

Beyond the Myth of Rural America

Its inhabitants are as much creatures of state power and industrial capitalism as their city-dwelling counterparts.
by Daniel Immerwahr via The New Yorker on October 16, 2023
Seized guns on a table in front of a police press conference.
partner

Gun Capitalism — Not ‘Ghost Guns’ or Other Trends — Is to Blame for Gun Violence

There are more than 400 million guns in Americans' hands.
by Andrew C. McKevitt via Made By History on December 5, 2021
Pleasant Plains School in Hertford County, North Carolina, active 1920-1950.

How the Rosenwald Schools Shaped a Generation of Black Leaders

Photographer Andrew Feiler documented how the educational institutions shaped a generation of black leaders.
by Michael J. Solender via Smithsonian on March 30, 2021
Black and white photo of a family sitting around the television together

A Brief History of Consumer Culture

Over the 20th century, capitalism preserved its momentum by molding the ordinary person into a consumer with an unquenchable thirst for more stuff.
by Kerryn Higgs via The MIT Press Reader on January 11, 2021

American Democracy Is in the Mail

U.S. democracy and the U.S. postal service share a long, entangled history. An attack against one signals an attack against the other.
by Daniel Carpenter via Boston Review on September 8, 2020
An example of Frank Lloyd Wrights American System-Built Homes.

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Affordable Housing Project

American System-Built Homes in Chicago (and elsewhere).
by Taylor Moore via Belt Magazine on May 9, 2019

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