• History

    Astronauts

    First Lady of Space: How Sally Ride Became A Household Name Overnight

    Loren Grush on the Media Circus Surrounding America's First Women Astronauts

     
    By Loren Grush  September 14, 2023
    Afghanistan

    The Remarkable Story of the Horsewomen Warriors of Afghanistan

    By Pardis Mahdavi  September 11, 2023
    Vacations

    “Out of Time’s Monotone”: The Literary Life of the French Riviera

    By Jonathan Miles  September 6, 2023
    American West

    Notions of “Wilderness:” Nine Essential Books About the American Frontier

    By Peter Stark  September 5, 2023
    Fathers and Sons

    How The Odyssey Helped My Father and Me to Grow

    By Daniel Mendelsohn  September 1, 2023
    Inventions

    How Complex Math and Human Innovation Created the Calculator

    By Keith Houston  August 31, 2023
    Book Marks: What the Critics Are Saying
    What to Watch

    Beyond Tortured Genius: Science and Conscience in Two Rediscovered Oppenheimer Films

    By Lauren Carroll Harris  August 31, 2023
    Cosmology

    On the “Inverted Cosmos”—From Aristotle to the Middle Ages

    By William Egginton  August 30, 2023
    Copyright

    Did J.D. Salinger Wield Copyright as Self-Protection?

    By Olivia Rutigliano  August 30, 2023
    Fashion History

    How the Humble Pocket Came to Signify Feminist Liberation

    Hannah Carlson Explores the History of Women's Pockets

    By Hannah Carlson  September 12, 2023
    Etymologies

    Month-Disease, Flewsa, Lunations: On the Etymology of Periods

    By Jenni Nuttall  August 29, 2023
    What to Watch

    The Greatest Velmas of History and Fiction

    By Shaenon K. Garrity  August 25, 2023
    Baillie Gifford Prize

    Rape As a Weapon: A Tragedy Both Ancient and Modern

    By Christina Lamb  August 25, 2023
    Activism

    How the Vietnam War Accelerated Generational Divides in America

    Drew Gilpin Faust on the Gradual Radicalization of Anti-War Student Activism

    By Drew Gilpin Faust  August 24, 2023
    Folk Music

    How the Folkloric Sounds of Rural America Reached the Mainstream

    By John Szwed  August 23, 2023
    Science Writing

    The Female Journalist Who Helped Create the Field of Science Reporting

    By Marcel Chotkowski LaFollette  August 22, 2023
    On Race

    The Battle to Fulfill the Racial Promise of Shaker Heights

    By Laura Meckler  August 22, 2023
    Literary Diplomats

    How Ralph Ellison Brought the Complexity of the American Experience to Europe

    Harilaos Stecopoulos on Literary Diplomacy During the Cold War

    By Harilaos Stecopoulos  August 21, 2023
    Agriculture

    How the Banana Came To Be—And How It Could Disappear

    By Emily Monosson  August 21, 2023
    Indictment

    Efforts That Were Wide-Ranging, Sordid, Chaotic, and Dangerous: Matthew Teague on the Indictment in Georgia

    By Matthew Teague  August 15, 2023
    Toys

    What It Was Like to Design for Barbie

    By Carol Spencer  August 14, 2023
    Photography

    Who Really Invented the Selfie?

    Matt Colquhoun on Narcissism, Photography History, and Britney Spears and Paris Hilton's Paradigm-Shifting Picture

    By Matt Colquhoun  August 14, 2023
    Nazi Germany

    “Woman, Jew, Intellectual:” How the Nazi State Saw Hannah Arendt

    By Wolfram Eilenberger  August 10, 2023
    A Little Respect Please

    6 Difficult Women Who Live on in Fiction

    By Elizabeth Fremantle  August 10, 2023
    Literary History

    How Obscenity Laws Nearly Stopped Nabokov’s Lolita from Being Published

    By Thomas Harding  August 29, 2023
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