Ralph Waldo Emerson

After the passing of William James, mediums across the US began receiving messages from the late Harvard professor.

Why have historians overlooked the connections between abolitionism and the famous New England cultural movement?

Coming to love Puritan poetry is an odd aesthetic journey. It's the sort of thing you expect people partial to bowties and gin gimlets to get involved with.

The American yam is not the food it says it is. How that came to be is a story of robbery, reinvention, and identity.

A new book challenges the notion that independent inventors were shunted aside in the 20th century by anonymous scientists in corporate research laboratories.

For more than a century, U.S. wars of invasion have claimed a humanitarian mantle.

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

Leading conservative pundits today are pounding themes that were popular among opponents of Reconstruction.

Known as a master of horror, he also understood the power—and the limits—of science.

Who made sure Henry David Thoreau's works came out after his death? His sister.

For the great American poet, the peculiar qualities of grass suggested a way to resolve the tension between the individual and the group.

Jefferson revised the Gospels to make Jesus more reasonable, and lost the power of his story.

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

The movement for racial equality echoes the vision of the “August First Day” holiday.

He was the most revered poet of his day. It’s worth trying to figure out why.

Andrew Delbanco's new book positions the debate over fugitive slaves as a central factor in the nation's slide toward disunion.

William James, Charles Peirce, and the questions that roiled them.

The righteous rage of John Brown.

For much of our clerisy, the nation is an anachronism or disgrace.

The long and complicated life of Kipling's famous poem.