P. T. Barnum

The rise of popular literature for children put a story, a role model, and a set of values in a young boy’s pocket.

The flamboyant big-cat aficionados of the Gilded Age weren’t strangers to fierce competition, threats and bizarre drama.

How a spy came to be buried in San Francisco is a forgotten tale of adventure, intrigue, and tragedy.

A new biography details the cultural jumble of literature, dirty jokes, and everything in between that went into the making of the foremost self-made American.

Revisionist biographers have given us countless perspectives, from Honest Abe to Killer Lincoln. Is there a version that’s true to his time and attuned to ours?

Miles Harvey on the life and times of James J. Strang.

Contending with the orientalist fears and fantasies of a young nation.

As historians turn their attention to animals, they are shedding new light on what it means to be human.

Boston and Providence meet the famous Siamese twins, Chang and Eng Bunker.

Longtime tenant in the 165-year-old St. Denis building in New York City reflects on the building's history.

Each generation revises his myth. Here’s the true story.