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Guilty of Miscegenation

A look at anti-miscegenation laws across the United States.

How Jackie Robinson’s Wife, Rachel, Helped Him Break Baseball’s Color Line

At some point, Jackie began to refer to himself not as “I” but as “we.”
Portrait of Emily Dickinson next to a portrait of Susan Gilbert

Emily Dickinson’s Electric Love Letters to Susan Gilbert

“Come with me this morning to the church within our hearts, where the bells are always ringing, and the preacher whose name is Love — shall intercede for us!”

Did George Washington ‘Have a Couple of Things in His Past’?

A historian assesses Donald Trump’s claim that the first president faced his own allegations of sexual assault.

The Old Man and His Muse: Hemingway’s Toe-Curling Infatuation with Adriana Ivancich

For the last decade of his life, the sozzled Hemingway was in thrall to an Italian 30 years his junior.

The Heart of the Matter: A History of Valentine Cards

A digital exhibit from the collections of the Strong National Museum of Play.

Wouldn’t You Love to Love Her?

A biography of Stevie Nicks does little to dispel the magic.

The Dramatically Different World of ’70s Dating Ads

Before Tinder, there was “Singles News.”

The Vanishing Pugilist and the Poet

The marriage of twentieth-century avant-gardists Arthur Cravan and Mina Loy was blissfully happy—until his mysterious disappearance.

Did Abraham Lincoln’s Bromance Alter the Course of American History?

Joshua Speed found his BFF in Abraham Lincoln.

The Turn-of-the-Century Lesbians Who Founded The Field of Home Ec

Flora Rose and Martha Van Rensselaer lived in an open lesbian relationship and helped found the field of home economics.

Touching Sentiment: The Tactility of Nineteenth-Century Valentines

Sentimental or “fancy” valentines, as they were called, were harbingers of hope, fondness, and desire.

Falling for Niagara Falls

How did Niagara Falls become the Honeymoon Capital of the World?
Entry in Theodore Roosevelt's diary with an "X" from the day his wife died.

Theodore Roosevelt & Valentine’s Day

How Theodore's Roosevelt's personal tragedies inspired him to reform America's cities.

The Curious Death of Oppenheimer’s Mistress

Who killed J. Robert Oppenheimer's Communist lover?
Couple kissing
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Love Me Did: A History of Courtship

Cuddle up with your sweetie for stories about three centuries of pre-marital intimacy, from Puritan "bundling" to the back-seat of the parents' Buick.
Inez Milholland with her dog.

Let Us Mate

Proposal advice from Inez Milholland, originally published in the Chicago Day Book, 1916.
Mark Twain

The Impossible Contradictions of Mark Twain

Populist and patrician, hustler and moralist, salesman and satirist, he embodied the tensions within his America, and ours.
Jack Clayton, The Great Gatsby, 1974.

America the Beautiful

One hundred years ago, "The Great Gatsby" was first published. It remains one of the books that almost every literate American has read.
Characters in the 1934 film "The Thin Man."

Fools in Love

Screwball comedies are beloved films, but for decades historians and critics have disagreed over what the genre is and which movies belong to it.
A man lifts a woman out of a boat and onto the pier. Photo from London, 1925.

The Complex History of American Dating

While going out on a date may seem like a natural thing to do these days, it wasn't always the case.
Close-up of E.E. Cummings, looking off to the side.

The Peculiar Legacy of E.E. Cummings

Revisiting his first book, "The Enormous Room," a reader can get a sense of everything appealing and appalling in his work.
A photograph of saxophonist Dexter Gordon at Jazzhus Montmartre in Copenhagen in 1964.

Why the Nordic Countries Emerged as a Haven for 20th-Century African American Expatriates

An exhibition in Seattle spotlights the Black artists and performers who called Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden home between the 1930s and the 1980s.
Judith Jones

The Woman Who Made America Take Cookbooks Seriously

Judith Jones edited culinary greats such as Julia Child and Edna Lewis—and identified the pleasure at the core of traditional “women’s work.”
Four women reading books inside a room at a women's boarding house.

At the Webster Apartments: One of Manhattan’s Last All-Women’s Boarding Houses

A look inside an enduring home for women 100 years after its doors first opened to residents.
Séance with spirit manifestation, 1872, by John Beattie.

Immortalizing Words

Henry James, spiritualism, and the afterlife.
Henry Ward Beecher.

When Preachers Were Rock Stars

A classic New Yorker account of the Henry Ward Beecher adultery trial recalls a time in America that seems both incomprehensible and familiar.
A couple in bed together, separated by a divider and watched by the girl's parents.

Bundling: An Old Tradition on New Ground

Common in colonial New England, bundling allowed a suitor to spend a night in bed with his sweetheart—while her parents slept in the next room.
Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in a scene from the 1966 film “Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?”

The Drama of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” Spilled Into Real Life

After "Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?," the nightmare of American familyhood was the only game in town.
A still from the film "It Happened One Night" of Clarke Gable watching Claudette Colbert hitchhike by showing her leg.

Our Timeless Romance With Screwball Comedy

Born out of the Great Depression, the genre reminds us that even in hard times there's laughter, love, and light.

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