Filter by:

Filter by published date

Viewing 211–240 of 356 results. Go to first page
Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert giving two thumbs up.

When the Movies Mattered

Siskel and Ebert and the heyday of popular movie criticism.
People looking at a window display in a candy store depicting "Fudge Town."

Fudgetown, USA

How a Michigan vacation town transformed the sweet into a nationwide tourist attraction.
A 1963 photo of Martin Luther King Jr. addressing the thousands of people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington.
partner

Campus Protests Are Called Disruptive. So Was the Civil Rights Movement

Like student protesters today, Martin Luther King Jr. and other 1960s civil rights activists were criticized as disruptive and disorderly.
Man laughing.

The Most Hated Sound on Television

For half a century, viewers scorned the laugh track while adoring shows that used it. Now it has all but disappeared.
Couriers’ duties included fetching patients from cabins, weighing babies, delivering medicine, cleaning saddles and bridles, and escorting any guests who rode the routes between FNS outposts.

Why Debutantes Volunteered to Be Horse-Riding Couriers in Rural Kentucky

Between the 1920s and 1940s, wealthy young women signed up to run errands and carry messages for the Frontier Nursing Service.
Drawing of a memorial, with two cutout, brown walls at the front of a walkway that read: reckoning. At the end of the walkway is a monument with a picture of Fred Rouse, and an inscription below it.

Fort Worth's Forgotten Lynching: In Search of Fred Rouse

Retracing the steps of a Texan lynched in 1921 requires a trip through dark days in state history.
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.
Peanuts' Franklin as a flat two-dimensional character.

It’s Flagrant Tokenism, Charlie Brown!

Peanuts’ Franklin has been a controversial character for decades. A new special attempts reparations.
Collage of African Americans' faces.

Specters of the Mythic South

How plantation fiction fixed ghost stories to Black Americans.
Niels Vodder display with furniture designed by Finn Juhl, Cabinetmakers Guild Exhibition, 1949.

Freedom Furniture

How did Americans come to love “mid-century modern”?
A K-mart store

Kmart Elegy

A formerly dominant American retail chain nears extinction.
Martin Luther King Jr. giving a speech.
partner

The Problem With Comparing Today's Activists to MLK

Media coverage of the civil rights movement is a reminder that the deification of King has skewed public memory.
A supporter of Donald Trump holds a Confederate flag inside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, after the crowd breached the building as Congress was proceeding with the electoral vote certification of the 2020 presidential election.

Trump's 'Lost Cause,' a Kind of Gangster Cult, Won't Go Away

Lost cause narratives sometimes have been powerful enough to build or destroy political regimes. They can advance a politics of grievance.
A nearly gutted department store escalator in Owings Mills Mall in Owings Mills, Maryland.

The Life and Death of the American Mall

The indoor suburban shopping center is a special kind of abandoned place.
Two American soldiers in UCP uniforms with an Iraqi man in the background.

Universal Failure

Universal Camouflage Pattern became a symbol of an unpopular war. Today, it’s being reappraised by those too young to remember the invasion of Iraq.
A group of Transappalachain migrant workers in Department 312 of the Anderson Delco-Remy plant pose for a photograph in February 1953.

On the New Book, "Hillbilly Highway"

Recovering the long-overlooked significance of the “hillbilly highway” in the US, with implications for labor history as well as US history broadly.
Shipwreck nicknamed the "Christmas Tree Boat," which disappeared beneath Lake Michigan waters in November 1912.

The ‘Christmas Tree Boat’ Shipwreck That Devastated 1912 Chicagoans

Marine archaeologists are beginning to understand what really happened to Captain Santa's ill-fated ship, nicknamed the Christmas Tree Boat.
Jack-o-lantern and calendar day October 31.

The Politics of Trunk or Treat

Nostalgia, idealism, and the policing of childhood.
Lou Reed in front of a photography setup.

The Canonization of Lou Reed

In a new biography, the Velvet Underground front man embodies a New York that exists only in memory.
"Spy vs. Spy" pointy-headed characters facing each other

Rethinking Spy vs. Spy: A Hand From One Page, A Bomb From Another

Like the spies themselves, the image we have of something is often what gets us in trouble.
A portion of the author’s music collection; bootleg cassette tapes and CDs. Photo by Maya Walker.

The Pirate Preservationists

When keeping cultural archives safe means stepping outside the law.
A historical marker for the Broad Street site of domestic slave trade, foregrounding an image of the Exchange Building, located in Charleston, South Carolina.

Activists Have Long Called for Charleston to Confront Its Racial History. Tourists Now Expect It.

Tourist interest is contributing to a more honest telling of the city’s role in the US slave trade. But tensions are flaring as South Carolina lawmakers restrict race-based teachings.
Streetview of New York City.

How the 9/11 Attacks Sparked a Never-Ending Wave of Gentrification

The post-9/11 landscape witnessed crackdowns on New York City nightlife amidst efforts to increase tourism.
“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.
A bowl of old-fashioned chowder with a spoon on the side

Chowder Once Had No Milk, No Potatoes—and No Clams

The earliest-known version of the dish was a winey, briny, bready casserole.
Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

A Child's Primer for Liberty

Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House" series is the best introduction for a child to virtues indispensable to liberty.
A painting of a Victorian-style room with an ornate bookshelf and books sitting on a table.

A Degenerate Assemblage

How Charles Lamb and his collection of well-loved books inspired a generation of American collectors.
two men, with one holding a basket on his basket, climb up sharp rocks on the Farallon Islands.

How a War Over Eggs Marked the Early History of San Francisco

Competition over eggs on the Farallon Islands in the midst of the California Gold Rush in San Francisco led to an all out war between eggers.
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.
Google's word occurences tool shows the word "teenager" appear around 1940, with an exponential increase in occurences up through the 2000s.

Teenagers Didn't Always Exist

So where were those angsty kids?

Filter Results:

Suggested Filters:

Idea

Person