Charles Dickens

What were Americans' immediate responses to "A Christmas Carol," and how did Dickens' reading tours and eventual death reshape its meaning?

What might Charles Dickens have thought about the American Civil War and the American struggle for abolition and social reforms?

How Charles Dickens' unpleasant trip to Boston led to "A Christmas Carol."

The predigital dream of the audiobook.

What if chairs could shift our state of consciousness, transporting the imagination into distant landscapes and ecstatic experiences, both religious and erotic?

A brief history of the Yuletide in America.

Reading recommendations from a lifelong education.

Though the practice is now more associated with Halloween, spooking out your family is well within the Christmas spirit.

Dickens, Tocqueville, and the U.N. all agree about this American invention: It’s torture.

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.

"The Bondwoman’s Narrative" is the first novel by a Black woman to describe slavery from the inside. Recently, scholars have discovered her true identity.

The Phrygian cap, also known as the liberty cap, emerged as a potent symbol in 18th-century America and France.

Already prone to boiler explosions that regularly killed scores of passengers, steamboats were pushed to their limits in races that valued speed over safety.

Long before monuments to enslavers were removed, lawmakers decided to relocate a scandalous, half-naked depiction of George Washington in a toga.

Revisiting the relationships of “a man who never smiled.”

Hollywood has long abused conservatorships. I spent the past decade studying one of the darkest cases.

The writer’s signature style of ending—a final, thrilling note—has the touch of magic that distinguishes the form at its best.

Why do so many politicians think people only work if threatened or forced into doing so?

One solution to climate change may come from our pre-automotive past.

"No one story can completely explain Annie."