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Cover of the book These Truths by Jill Lepore.

Only Dead Metaphors Can Be Resurrected

Historical narratives of the United States have never not been shaped by an anxiety about the end of it all. Are we a new Rome or a new Zion?
Comedy troupe on stage.

Finding the Funny

Historians’ lectures provide material for improv comedians.
Lithograph of a bachelor from 1848.

Brothels for Gentlemen: Nineteenth-Century American Brothel Guides, Gentility, and Moral Reform

Brothel guides’ descriptions of brothelgoers asked that if respectable men could enjoy sexual pleasure for sale in American cities, why couldn’t their readers?
Soldiers burning books.

How We Roasted Donald Duck, Disney's Agent of Imperialism

Why a 47-year old anti-colonialist critique by Chilean dissidents may be newly relevant in the Trump era.

The 100 Pages That Shaped Comics

From Mickey to Maus, tracing the evolution of the pictures, panels, and text that brought comic books to life.
Still of Molly Ringwald and Emilio Estevez from The Breakfast Club.

What About “The Breakfast Club”?

Revisiting the movies of my youth in the age of #MeToo.

A Vacuum at the Center

How a demagogue resembles a typhoon, and why it matters to the future of the republic.

The Impossibility of Knowing Mark Twain

Even Twain's own autobiography cannot reveal the whole truth of the literary legend.
19th century illustration of P. T. Barnum's white elephant Toung Taloung

Race and the White Elephant War of 1884

A bizarre episode in circus history became an unlikely forum for discussing 19th-century theories of race.
People on a rollercoaster

Are We Having Too Much Fun?

In 1985, Neil Postman observed an America imprisoned by its own need for amusement. He was, it turns out, extremely prescient.
Book cover of Octavia Butler's "Parable of the Talents."

The Fictional Presidential Candidate Who Promised to ‘Make America Great Again’

How a work of science fiction anticipated the coming of Trump.
Portrait of Ambrose Bierce with skull

One of America's Best

Ambrose Bierce deviated from the refined eeriness of English-style ghost stories for his haunting descriptions of fateful coincidence and horrific revelation.

No Laughing Matter

The evolution of the iconic smiley face and some of its not so happy connotations.

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