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popular culture

activities, experiences, or artistic products that pervade society in a particular time

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Firecracker box with "Santa Claus" theme

Kaboom! 10 Facts About Firecrackers That Will Blow You Away

Firecrackers are essentially un-American, even though we associate them with our most deeply patriotic celebration, the Fourth of July.
by Lisa Hix via Collectors Weekly on July 3, 2014
A collage of a still from "All in the Family" on a stylized television with another television in the background.

Fandom's Great Divide

The schism isn't between TV viewers who love a show and those who hate it—it’s between those who love it in very different ways.
by Emily Nussbaum via The New Yorker on March 31, 2014

How Barry Levinson’s Diner Changed Cinema, 30 Years Later

With Diner, Barry Levinson turned a film about nothing into a male-bonding classic, launched careers, and spawned hits from Seinfeld to The Office.
by S. L. Price via HWD on February 10, 2012
Woody Guthrie.

This Land Is Our Land

The Popular Front and American culture.
by Michael Kazin via Humanities on May 1, 2011
Hard hats on Nixon's cabinet conference table.

When Blue-Collar Pride Became Identity Politics

Remembering how the white working class got left out of the New Left, and why we're all paying for it today.
by Jefferson Cowie, Joan Walsh via Salon on September 6, 2010
Advertisement for a "Little Orphan Annie" comic book collection. The protagonist, Annie and her dog are in the foreground of the advertisement.

Little Ideological Annie

How a cartoon gamine midwifed the graphic novel—and the modern conservative movement.
by Ben Schwartz via Bookforum on November 30, 2008
John Harvard statue by Daniel Chester French.

Reading Puritans and the Bard

Without the bawdy world of Falstaff and Prince Hal and of Shakespeare’s jesters, there would have been nothing for those dissenting Puritans to dissent from.
by Mark A. Peterson via Commonplace on October 1, 2006
A bronze statue of Willie Nelson.

Willie Nelson at 70

"The Essential Willie Nelson" compilation demonstrates the continuity of Nelson's style across a variety of musical genres.
by Gene Santoro via The Nation on October 30, 2003
Computer mouse connected to the word "blog."

Play With Your Words

How the term "blog" came into being.
by Peter Merholz via peterme.com on May 17, 2002
Elvis Presley dancing.

How Long Will We Care?

A music critic assesses Elvis Presley's influence on popular culture.
by Lester Bangs via Village Voice on August 29, 1977
Two bikers ride through the desert in Easy Rider, a 1969 film.

See America First

Two movies, 'Easy Rider' and 'Alice's Restaurant,' reveal the ideals of counterculture and act as vehicles for social commentary.
by Ellen Willis via New York Review of Books on January 2, 1970
Sheet music cover for "I Didn't Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier," 1915.

"I Didn't Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier"

The sound of antiwar protest in 1915.
via Voices & Visions
Movie poster for Warfare, 2025.
partner

War Stories Without the History

Films about the Iraq War prize “truth-telling,” but don’t offer many insights about the war itself.
by Jake Pitre via HNN on July 1, 2025
Beyonce concert.

Why Beyoncé Is Carving a Route Along the ‘Chitlin' Circuit’

From Jim Crow-era performance to contemporary gospel musicals, entertainers have shaped the Black public sphere.
by Rashida Z. Shaw McMahon via Zócalo Public Square on May 5, 2025
Helicopter, soldiers, and civilians at the fall of Saigon.
partner

How We Oversimplified the History of the Vietnam War

Popular memory of the war in both the U.S. and Vietnam tends to cast the fall of Saigon as inevitable.
by Andrew Bellisari via Made By History on April 30, 2025
Mark Twain sits in thought on stone steps surrounded by nature while holding papers

Twain Dreams

The enigma of Samuel Clemens.
by John Jeremiah Sullivan via Harper’s on April 29, 2025
Political cartoon of smokers.

Puff, Puff? Pass!: The Anti-Tobacco Writings of Margaret Woods Lawrence

Reformers linked tobacco use to a deterioration of social and familial values, a habit that disrupted the sanctity of the home.
by Brian Fehler via Commonplace on April 8, 2025
A woman at a toy counter.
partner

“The End Is Coming! The End Is Coming!”

In the 1990s, an entire industry was born of trying to convince Americans that Beanie Babies were a great investment opportunity.
by Ross Benes via HNN on April 1, 2025
Shots from various conspiracy films of the 20th century.

The Life and Death of Conspiracy Cinema

Why did Hollywood lose interest in making paranoid thrillers? Was it a change in the culture? Or a change in the marketplace?
by T. M. Brown via The Nation on March 31, 2025
A portrait of Edgar Allen Poe.

The Most Overrated Writer in America

Do people really like Edgar Allen Poe?
by Naomi Kanakia via Woman of Letters on March 18, 2025
Painting by Earle Richardson titled "Employment of Negroes in Agriculture," 1934.

Uncle Tom's Cabin is the Great American Novel

Most countries take their popular novelists more seriously than America has. The term “Great American Novel” was literally invented to describe this book
by Naomi Kanakia via Woman of Letters on March 11, 2025
Cartoon of well-dressed arm holding a lit match

The Gilded Age Never Ended

Plutocrats, anarchists, and what Henry James grasped about the romance of revolution.
by Adam Gopnik via The New Yorker on February 24, 2025
Elaine May and Walter Matthau sitting on a bench in May’s film A New Leaf.

May Days

A new biography of an elusive comic talent.
by Lizzy Harding via Bookforum on February 11, 2025
A group of people riding horses on a dude ranch.

The Rise and Resilience of Dude Ranches

Dude ranches have been a popular American vacation spot for more than one hundred years.
by Teresa Bitler via The Saturday Evening Post on February 3, 2025
The Griffith Observatory, constructed by the Works Progress Administration, on a hill overlooking Los Angeles.

A New Deal for Architecture

What it conveys is quite specific: grandeur, beauty, dynamism, and power.
by David Schaengold via Compact on December 20, 2024

Can the Rodeo Save a Historic Black Town?

One woman’s quest to rescue Boley, Oklahoma.
by Caleb Gayle via The Atlantic on December 17, 2024
William F. Buckley, Donald Trump.

The Modern Conservative Tradition and the Origins of Trumpism

Today’s Trumpist radicals are not (small-c) conservatives – but they stand in the continuity of Modern Conservatism’s defining political project.
by Thomas Zimmer via Democracy Americana on December 16, 2024
A painting of a large camera on a film set, surrounded by green screens.

Casual Viewing

Why Netflix looks like that.
by Will Tavlin via n+1 on December 16, 2024
Johnny Carson hosting the Tonight Show.

The Amazing, Disappearing Johnny Carson

Carson pioneered a new style of late-night hosting—relaxed, improvisatory, risk-averse, and inscrutable.
by Isaac Butler via The New Yorker on November 6, 2024
A drawing of Kamala Harris in a police uniform.

Lipstick on the Pigs

Kamala Harris and the lineage of the female cop.
by Sophie Lewis via The Drift on October 28, 2024
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