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Photograph of a newsstand selling magazines

What Are Magazines Good For?

The story of America can be told through the story of its periodicals.
Illustration of Thomas Morton of Merrymount being arrested by Myles Standish of the Plymouth Colony

Pranksters and Puritans

Why Thomas Morton seems to have taken particular delight in driving the Pilgrims and Puritans out of their minds.
A collage with photos of Barack Obama.

The Limits of Barack Obama’s Idealism

“A Promised Land” tells of a country that needed a savior.
A graphic featuring illustrations of Stan Lee.

The Unheroic Life of Stan Lee

In a career of many flops, he laid claim to the outsized success of Marvel Comics.
Whale illustrations.

The Art of Whaling: Illustrations from the Logbooks of Nantucket Whaleships

The 19th-century whale hunt was a brutal business. But between the frantic calls of “there she blows!”, there was plenty of time for creation too.
F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Why Do We Keep Reading the Great Gatsby?

Ninety-six years after the book's publication, the characters of "The Great Gatsby" continue to mesmerize readers.
Thorstein Veblen in 1880, the year he graduated from Carleton College

The Prophet of Maximum Productivity

Thorstein Veblen’s maverick economic ideas made him the foremost iconoclast of the Age of Iconoclasts.
Artwork depicting the Manzanar War Relocation Center sign.

Souvenirs From Manzanar

The daughter and granddaughter of a former internee return to the notorious WWI-era detention site for Japanese-Americans.
John F. Kennedy giving a speech.

Shamalot

Jack Kennedy, we hardly know ye—and to know ye is not to love ye.
A picture of Trump going through a shredder.

Will Trump Burn the Evidence?

How the President could endanger the official records of one of the most consequential periods in American history.
An image of William Faulkner and author André Malroux.

Faulkner Couldn’t Overcome Racism, But He Never Ignored It

That’s why the privileged White novelist’s work is still worth reading, Michael Gorra argues.
Ben Cohen giving a presentation

B. R. Cohen on How Food Became “Pure”

On the corrupt, contaminated, deceptive world of 19th-century food adulteration, and how Cohen's own work straddles pure academia and public-facing scholarship.

Writing a History of a Pandemic During a Pandemic

Jon Sternfeld on collective memory and history as instruction.

The Revolutionary Thoreau

Generations of readers have chosen to emphasize Thoreau's spiritual communion with Nature, but Walden begins with trenchant critique of “progress.”

Explore 175 Years of Words in 'Scientific American'

Search a 4,000-word database to see how language in the magazine evolved over time.

How Aztecs Told History

For the warriors and wanderers who became the Aztec people, truth was not singular and history was braided from many voices.
August 31 1946 Cover of New Yorker magazine

The New Yorker Article Heard Round the World

Revisiting John Hersey's groundbreaking "Hiroshima."
The Oakland Municipal Auditorium set up as a hospital, with Red Cross nurses tending to flu patients, 1918.

The 1918 Flu Pandemic Killed Millions. So Why Does Its Cultural Memory Feel So Faint?

A new book suggests that the plague’s horrors haunt modernist literature between the lines.
A woman videochats on her phone
partner

During Epidemics, Media (And Now Social Media) Have Always Helped People to Connect

In a devastating 1793 epidemic people transformed their newspaper into something like today’s social media.

Bad Romance

The afterlife of Vivian Gornick's "The Romance of American Communism" shows that we bear the weight of dead generations—and sometimes living ones, too.

The Seminal Novel About the 1918 Flu Pandemic Was Written by a Texan

Katherine Anne Porter’s ‘Pale Horse, Pale Rider’ tells the tale of a pandemic she barely survived.

Can Feminist Manifestoes of the Past Wake Us Up Today?

A conversation with Breanne Fahs on the lasting lessons of women's anger.

The School Shooting That Austin Forgot

In 1978, an eighth grader from a prominent Austin family killed his teacher. His classmates are still haunted by what happened that terrible day and after.
Minskoff Theatre entrance.

Shakespeare Wrote His Best Works During a Plague

The qualities for which live theater is celebrated—audiences responding with laughter, tears, gasps, and coughs—accelerate its danger.
Wendel Willkie

Around the World in 49 Days

A review of "The Idealist: Wendell Willkie’s Wartime Quest to Build One World."
Woodcut depicting British soldiers shooting at colonists in the Boston Massacre.

Gossip, Sex, and Redcoats: On the Build-Up to the Boston Massacre

Don't let anyone tell you revolutionary history is boring.
Photo of Carson McCullers

The Closeting of Carson McCullers

Through her relationships with other women, one can trace the evidence of McCullers’s becoming, as a woman, as a lesbian, and as a writer.

The Domestication of the Garage

J.B. Jackson’s 1976 essay on the evolution of the American garage displays his rare ability to combine deep erudition with eloquent and plainspoken analysis.
The Nancy Drew logo, a silhouette of a woman looking through a detective glass

Oh Nancy, Nancy!

The mysterious appeal of my first detective.

The Way We Write History Has Changed

A deep dive into an archive will never be the same.

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