Culture

Do people really like Edgar Allen Poe?

For Henry David Thoreau, it is only as strangers that we can see each other as the bearers of divinity we really are.

A new museum dedicated to Go-Go music comes with a message for both gentrifiers and lawmakers: #Don’tMuteDC.

Even as “Edges of Ailey” gathers such intimate documents, it does not make them legible to its visitors.

A new publication obscures the canonical writer.

Looking for the poet between the lines.

Video games, violence and the enduring allure of the vigilante hero.

Plutocrats, anarchists, and what Henry James grasped about the romance of revolution.

Edmond Dédé’s “Morgiane” shows how diversity initiatives can promote works of real cultural value.

Sometimes seen as the stuff of commencement addresses, his poems are hard to pin down—just like the man behind them.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a man of letters, in possession of a goodly number of books, must be in need of a ladder.

City of the living dead.

The Black Panther Party illustrated how communal love can be a powerful agent for change and empowerment.

The Puritan origins of modern ideas about migration.

“Bloody Sam” was born one hundred years ago this month.

A review of Edwin Frank's short list of great 20th century novels.

Jon Savage’s “The Secret Public” traces the influence of queer artists on a hostile culture.

A new biography of an elusive comic talent.

You have two ears for a reason.

Her new book tells the story of Black people through an exploration of the color blue.

The harrowing and heroic life of Marianne Faithfull, cheater of a thousand deaths and music history’s true avenging angel.

On Pierrepoint B. Noyes, H.G. Wells, and the “Superweapons” of early science-fiction.

Levity and play — eerily combined with anxiety, terror, and deadly violence — shaped the identity and image of Early Republic militias.

Elon Musk’s defenders were quick to claim that his hand motion was actually an ancient “Roman salute” — but that gesture never existed.

Dinner parties in the capital have long been a path to power, but Perle Mesta had her eye on a different prize.

In the late 1960s, in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, jazz legends were playing the best music you’ve never heard.

Rap beef is form of capitalist accumulation that enriches artists—and, most of all, the corporate suits that run their record labels.

Which public figures impacted baby naming trends?

On Jazz Age gay culture and its backlash.

When Barney's is selling Black Sabbath shirts for $175, does it change the cultural credibility of your favorite vintage band tee?