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J. Robert Oppenheimer

"Cry Baby Scientist": What Oppenheimer the Film Gets Wrong about Oppenheimer the Man

The so-called "father of the bomb" helped bring us prematurely into the age of existential risk.
by Haydn Belfield via Vox on July 22, 2023
Actor portraying Oppenheimer.

The Real History Behind Christopher Nolan's 'Oppenheimer'

The "father of the atomic bomb" has long been misunderstood. Will the new film finally get J. Robert Oppenheimer right?
by Andy Kifer via Smithsonian on July 18, 2023
A businessman superimposed over the Wall Street skyline.

How Not to Tell Stories About Corporate Capitalism

Turning the history of capitalism into a morality tale about good guys and bad guys is tempting.
by Kyle Edward Williams via The Hedgehog Review on June 30, 2023
Two horses standing outside of a horse trailer.

A Gallop Through a Horse's Pedigree

An in-depth look at horse breeding.
by Mark Harvey via 3 Quarks Daily on June 5, 2023
Illustration of Freud emerging from Woodrow Wilson's head.

Should We Psychoanalyze Our Presidents?

Sigmund Freud once applied his Oedipal theory to the leader of the free world.
by Franklin Foer via The Atlantic on May 28, 2023
A colorful drawing of Lydia Maria Child sitting at a writing desk.

Who Was Lydia Maria Child?

A new biography examines the life and times of the pioneering activist, abolitionist, and writer.
by Susan Cheever via The Nation on May 17, 2023
Car interior with Chuck Berry reflected in side view mirror.

An Anthropologist of Filth

On Chuck Berry.
by Ian Penman via Harper’s on May 4, 2023
Ferris wheel at the Chicago World Fair of 1893.

The Magic Lantern Man

At every stop, he enthralled audiences with a device called a “stereopticon.”
by David Cecelski via davidcecelski.com on May 1, 2023
Illustration of McCormick at his desk, hunched over a typewriter.

Hellhounds on His Trail

Mack McCormick’s long, tortured quest to find the real Robert Johnson.
by Michael Hall via Texas Monthly on April 4, 2023
Richard Nixon discusses Vietnam with National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger and Deputy National Security Advisor Al Haig at Camp David, 1972.
partner

The "Madman Theory" Was Quintessential Nixon

The rash ruse was central to Nixon’s strategy to fight the Cold War, and can also tell us a good deal about the famously elusive ex-president himself.
by Zachary Jonathan Jacobson via HNN on March 26, 2023
Patrick Ewing makes a move against Larry Bird and Mark Acres on the basketball court.

The Myth of the Knicks

In Chris Herring’s recent history of the New York basketball team, we get a behind-the-scenes look at the sports commentariat’s fixation on grit and toughness.
by Zito Madu via The Nation on December 7, 2022
Leland and Jane Stanford

Stop All the Cocks! Who Killed Jane Stanford?

Many of the ­private colleges and universities in the US arose as much out of vanity as necessity. But for morbid narcissism, nothing comes close to Stanford.
by James Lasdun via London Review of Books on December 1, 2022
Illustration of Crazy Horse

How Would Crazy Horse See His Legacy?

Perhaps no Native American is more admired for military acumen than the Lakota leader. But is that how he wanted to be remembered?
by Pekka Hämäläinen via Smithsonian on November 2, 2022
Mark Wallinger's "Self-Portrait," a painting showing black dripping paint in the silhouette of an unfurled scroll on a grey background

The Illusion of the First Person

The personal essay is the purest expression of the lie that individual subjectivity exists prior to the social formations that gave rise to it.
by Merve Emre via New York Review of Books on October 11, 2022
Ink drawing of Buster Keaton's face against pale pink background

Keep Your Eye on the Kid

Buster Keaton made his own kind of sense out of the perplexities of existence in ways baffling to those among whom he found himself.
by Geoffrey O'Brien via New York Review of Books on September 29, 2022
An eight photo collage of pictures showing the proper way for women to smile

Just Wear Your Smile

Few who encounter Positive Psychology via self-help books and therapy know that its gender politics valorize the nuclear family and heterosexual monogamy.
by Micki McElya via Boston Review on September 26, 2022
Two women stand in front of the Supreme Court building holding a sign that reads, "Keep Abortion Legal."

"The Family Roe" and the Messy Reality of the Abortion “Jane Roe” Didn’t Get

A new book juxtaposes dominant narratives about motherhood, women’s autonomy, and abortion with the weirdness of ordinary lives.
by Lara Freidenfelds via Nursing Clio on April 7, 2022
Artists and people sitting on and around a hotel at Woodstock in 1967

The Dropout, a History: From Postwar Paranoia to a Summer of Love

The dropout was not just a hippy-trippy hedonist but a paranoid soul, who feared brainwashing and societal control.
by Charlie Williams via Aeon on December 3, 2021
Geneticist Hermann Muller and his electronic equipment.

The Big ‘What If’ of Cancer

How a feisty, suicidal Nobel laureate infuriated both Hitler and Stalin, and stalled cancer research for fifty years along the way.
by Sam Kean via The Disappearing Spoon on November 23, 2021
Cartoon of a large Ronald Reagan leaning on a small Jimmy Carter.

The Surprising Greatness of Jimmy Carter

A conversation with presidential biographers Jonathan Alter and Kai Bird.
by Jonathan Alter, Timothy Noah, Kai Bird via Washington Monthly on November 8, 2021
Jacqueline Jones

Biography’s Occupational Hazards: Confronting Your Subject as Both Person and Persona

As a biographer, Jacqueline Jones found herself wondering how she should deal with aspects of her subject’s life that left her baffled, even mystified.
by Jacqueline Jones via Perspectives on History on September 8, 2021
Illustration of Edgar Allen Poe looking out window at raven, painted by Eduard Manet

Edgar Allan Poe Needs a Friend

Revisiting the relationships of “a man who never smiled.”
by Matthew Redmond via Lapham’s Quarterly on September 7, 2021

The Once and Future Temp

What can the history of the temp-work industry teach us about the precarity of modern working life?
by Eve Zelickson via Public Books on August 27, 2021

Remembered for the Wrong Reason?

Which personality of the American Revolution or the founding era is remembered for the wrong reasons, and why?
by Jason Yonce, J. L. Bell, David Price, Matthew M. Montelione, Don Glickstein, Will Monk, David Head, Don N. Hagist, Derrick E. Lapp, Eric Sterner, William H. Manthorpe Jr., Conner Runyan, Gene Procknow, Greg Aaron, John DeLee, Robert S. Davis, Jane Hampton Cook, Gregory Safko, James Kirby Martin, Alex Colvin, William M. Welsch, Jim Piecuch, Stuart Hatfield via Journal of the American Revolution on August 11, 2021
Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln’s Rowdy America

A new biography details the cultural jumble of literature, dirty jokes, and everything in between that went into the making of the foremost self-made American.
by Sean Wilentz via New York Review of Books on April 29, 2021
Pocahontas characters overlaid onto a landscape.

Deconstructing Disney: Queer Coding and Masculinity in Pocahontas

Disney gets inventive when they need to circumvent white people’s historical responsibility for genocidal atrocities — and queerness is a useful scapegoat.
by Jeanna Kadlec via Longreads on April 1, 2021
Alfred Hitchcock directing

The Haunted Imagination of Alfred Hitchcock

How the master of suspense got his sadistic streak.
by John Banville via The New Republic on April 1, 2021
Black-and-white photograph of Louis Agassiz sitting in chair, looking through a magnifying glass at a sea urchin.

Louis Agassiz, Under a Microscope

The two prevailing historical visions of Louis Agassiz — one gentle and reverential, the other rigid and bigoted — may simply be two sides of the same coin.
by Saima S. Iqbal via The Harvard Crimson on March 18, 2021
Alex Trebek at the Jeopardy host stand.

An Oral History of How Alex Trebek Became America’s Most Beloved Game-Show Host

Four decades of “Jeopardy!” contestants tell the story of Alex Trebek’s rise from affable Canadian TV host to cultural icon.
by Emily Yahr via Washington Post on November 17, 2020

‘Anyone Ever Seen Cocaine?’ What We Found in the Archives of Bernie Sanders’s TV Show.

What a forgotten trove of videotapes reveals about the man who rewrote America’s political script.
by Holly Otterbein via Politico Magazine on May 3, 2019
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