nostalgia — Bunk History

A young Donald Trump tosses an apple into the air.

When Trump's Brain Broke

Donald Trump seems stuck in the 80s.

by John Ganz via Unpopular Front on August 21, 2025

Trump poster hanging on a federal building, scowling at people below.

If Trump Could Make John Wayne the Head of Homeland Security, He Would

Trump mixes restoration with revolution—his reactionary modernism wooed Silicon Valley, but for everyone else, it signals looming repression.

by John Ganz via The Nation on June 10, 2025

Vintage illustration of three generations of a 1950s American family, sitting in their living room watching television (screen print), 1950.

How Social Reactionaries Exploit Economic Nostalgia

Conservatives think we need traditional hierarchies to reverse social decline; But it’s the economic equality created by strong unions that Americans miss.

by Meagan Day via Jacobin on May 20, 2025

Two 1950s cars in front of a diner

You Can’t Go Home Again

Our thinking about nostalgia is badly flawed because it relies on defective assumptions about progress and time.

by Charlie Tyson via The Hedgehog Review on March 19, 2024

A turntable and records.

What’s Old is New Again (and Again): On the Cyclical Nature of Nostalgia

Retro was not the antithesis to the sub- and countercultural experiments of the 1960s, it grew directly out of them.

by Tobias Becker via Literary Hub on December 13, 2023

A photograph of the back of a woman's head, superimposed over a photograph of a body of water as if looking out over it.

What if Nostalgia Isn’t What It Used to Be?

As our faith in the future plummets and the present blends with the past, we feel certain that we’ve reached the point where history has fallen apart.

by Thomas Mallon via The New Yorker on November 20, 2023

Empty, dimly lit interior of shopping mall.

Nostalgia's Empire

We should interrogate nostalgia’s primacy without advocating for its eradication.

by Grafton Tanner, Johny Pitts via Public Books on June 8, 2023

Turbulent drawing evoking mass strikes, urban decay, gas shortages, police in riot gear, chainsaw massacre, and disco.

We’re Haunted by the Economy of the 1970s

Politicians across the political spectrum warn of a return to the decade of stagflation, urban decay, and labor mutiny; but their solution misses the mark.

by Aaron Timms via The New Republic on October 31, 2022

The Last American Aristocrat

George Kennan made hierarchy seem seductive.

by Phil Klay via UnHerd on August 12, 2022

Old cars piled up under a bridge overpass.

New York: The Invention of an Imaginary City

How nostalgic fantasies about the “authentic” New York City obscure the real-world place.

by Yasmin Nair via Current Affairs on June 13, 2021

John Ossoff.

The Politics of Nostalgia

Nostalgia is not merely reductive; it is also productive.

by Rachel B. Gross via Arc: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera on February 2, 2021

Trump speaking in front of Mount Rushmore, stage lit, mountains in night's darkness

Nostalgia and the Tragedy of Trump's Speech at Mount Rushmore

In a recent speech, Trump looks to America's past for answers. However, the history he recounts is glaringly limited.

by John Bodnar via HNN on September 20, 2020

Where Were You in ‘73?

In the turbulent 1970s, the balm of pop cultural nostalgia set the tone for today's political reaction.

by Jason Tebbe via Tropics of Meta on July 16, 2020

Why Nostalgia Is Our New Normal

For hundreds of years, doctors thought nostalgia was a disease. Now, it's a name for our modern condition.

via The Walrus on May 7, 2020

Death Proof

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

by Soraya Roberts via Longreads on August 1, 2019

Still from Dirty Dancing.

In the Dark All Katz Are Grey: Notes on Jewish Nostalgia

Searching for where I belong, I find myself cobbling together a mongrel Judaism—half-remembered and contradictory and all mine.

by Samuel Ashworth via Hazlitt on February 23, 2018

The Strange Story of the Forever 1980s

Why the makers of today's popular culture are still so obsessed with the Reagan era.

by Jarrett Ruminski via That Devil History on October 29, 2017

25 small photos of Bruce Springsteen playing the guitar or photos of him.

Noir City vs. The Opera on the Turnpike

As Bruce Springsteen’s "Born to Run" turns 50, its most underrated track deserves some love.

by Kirk Curnutt via Clio and the Contemporary on August 26, 2025

Joseph Pilates and Romana Kryzanowska illustration of them doing pilates.

Bodies by Joe

With his strange machines and an uncanny, intuitive understanding of muscles, Joseph Pilates created a new technique for improving strength and movement.

by Alma Guillermoprieto via New York Review of Books on July 31, 2025

Conservative protesters hold signs and flags at a Tea Party protest.

Lone Star Futures

Texas might have been a place to start a conversation about widening the scope of civil liberties, but it has also been a place where those liberties end.

by Emma Pask via Public Books on June 19, 2025

Green light in a dark sky.

On My Grandfather’s Novel: F. Scott Fitzgerald’s "The Great Gatsby" at 100

Reflections on the literary legacy of a timeless American novel.

by Eleanor Lanahan via Literary Hub on April 7, 2025

Why Is ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ So Misunderstood?

At 50, the game is more popular than ever, but its core appeal is still a great secret.

by Andrea Long Chu via Vulture on December 30, 2024

The Sentimentalizing of Federalist Ten

Ideas about history still prevailing in the liberal resistance to Trump keep pushing us backward.

by William Hogeland via Hogeland's Bad History on December 10, 2024

Illustration of kringles in a Christmas parade.

How the Kringle Became a Wisconsin Christmas Classic

Trader Joe’s stocks an aggressively American version of the Dutch pastry, turning it into a beloved holiday staple nationwide.

by Trisha Gopal via Eater on December 2, 2024

How Entertainment Mangled Public Discourse

Neil Postman’s jeremiad against TV seems rather quaint today—and not just because he was shouting into the wind and knew it.

by Katha Pollitt via The New Republic on November 20, 2024

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.

by Adrian Daub via Dreams in the Which House on November 3, 2024

The Earth drawn as a baseball flying through space.

Climate Change Comes for Baseball

The summer sport is facing big questions about how it will adapt.

by Ellen Cushing via The Atlantic on November 2, 2024

Tourists on a ferry sailing along the coast of Maine.

A Picture-Book Guide to Maine

Children’s stories set on the coast suggest a wilder way of life.

by Anna E. Holmes via The New Yorker on September 8, 2024

Reddy Kilowatt mascott emerging from an outlet.

The Energy Mascot that Electrified America

An animation historian on Reddy Kilowatt, the cartoon charged with electrifying everything in the early 20th century.

by Mike Munsell, Kirsten Moana Thompson via Heatmap on August 5, 2024

Still from Midnight Cowboy of a man with a gun in Times Square.

How the Movies Captured Times Square’s Grimy Golden Age

Times Square’s decline can be dated to the Depression, but it wasn’t until the 1970s that the bottom fell out.

by Nathaniel Rich via Current [The Criterion Collection] on July 25, 2024

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