Charles Darwin

A new book argues that Darwin failed to capture the American imagination because of the untimely death of Henry David Thoreau.

Between 40% and 50% of children didn’t live past 5 in the US during the 19th century. Authors documented the common but no less gutting grief of losing a child.

Why did the first director of the UN agency think eugenics held the key to a more evolved, harmonious world?

The 20th-century movement to fix slouching questions the moral and political dimensions of addressing bad backs over wider public health concerns.

The Civil War's vast death toll joined Earth's deep time story, magnifying its meaning as part of God's creative acts across eons.

A new history revisits “the Trial of the Century” and its legacy in contemporary politics.

Confused 17th-century Europeans argued that human groups were separately created, a precursor to racist thought today.

Beware of theories about human nature based on the study of our earliest ancestors.

From evolution to anti-racism, parents and progressives have clashed for a century over who gets to tell our origin stories.

A century ago, the most effective school-ban campaign in American history set the pattern: noise and fear, but not much change in what schools actually teach.

The great discoveries of the age captivated Poe’s imagination. He almost always misunderstood them.

How an evil sea captain and a beloved queen made the world crave KFC.

Indigenous nations are spearheading a movement to restore buffalo to the American landscape.

Audrey Clare Farley on the scientists who weaponized biology.

Exposing the damned lies of three science pioneers.

Until a century or so ago, almost no one lived alone; now many endure shutdowns and lockdowns on their own. How did modern life get so lonely?

On Hosea Easton’s and David Walker’s attempts to debunk scientific racism.

The Comte de Buffon's thirty-six volume Natural History claimed that America was a land of degeneracy. That enraged Thomas Jefferson.

How did facial hair win American men’s hearts and minds? Thank the War on Terror.

For well over a hundred years, paleontology has done double duty as mass entertainment.