Devin Thomas O’Shea

The author of "Cahokia Jazz" reflects on the similarities between historical fiction and science fiction, and the imaginative space opened by archival silences.

In Indiana, “hoosier” is a badge of honor. In St Louis, it’s the nastiest insult around. The difference reveals the prejudice that breaks worker solidarity.

On the St. Louis theme park that never made it past the drawing board.

In the midst of the Depression, Conroy helped encourage a new generation of working-class writers.

Activists are often held up as exemplars of personal morality — but in every social struggle, ordinary people with complex lives rise up as leaders.

The mistress of JFK, there was a lot more than wealth, whiteness, and femininity to make Mary Pinchot Meyer a target of murder.

During the Great Depression, St. Louis's Funsten Nut Factory was racially divided. But Black workers went on strike — and got their white coworkers to join them.

Veterans of the 1848 German revolution immigrated to America with three passions burning in their hearts: barbells, beer, and socialism.

The history and context of the made-up aesthetics of the early Ku Klux Klan.

In the 1950s, the U.S. military conducted unethical radiological experiments on Black communities, including the Pruitt-Igoe public housing complex.

After over a century, the unelected mascot of St. Louis is finally losing its place in public life.