Culture

In every generation, writers and readers find new ways to plumb the depths of Herman Melville and his work.

A new documentary, “Billion Dollar Babies,” shows how a product of Appalachian folk art drew the blueprint for all holiday toy crazes to come.

On the performance of authenticity and the native stories left to tell.

A pop star’s road map to decadence.

On the early years of America's chronicler of the Great Plains.

He was one of the world’s most celebrated and beloved stars. Then his adopted country turned against him.

In 1871, the Fisk University singers embarked on a tour that introduced white Americans to a Black sound that would reshape the nation.

Controversial artworks are flashpoints when artistic freedom and religious sensitivities collide.

On ramps, xonacatl, skunk eggs and more.

A conversation with the longtime director about “Rustin,” growing up in Kentucky, and putting on a show.

It is impossible to talk about the blues and country without talking about race, authenticity, and contemporary America’s relationship to its past.

The Moog synthesizer was one of the most influential inventions in 20th-century sound. With the recent sale of the Asheville-based company, a new era begins.

Nostalgia, idealism, and the policing of childhood.

How the album pays homage to hip-hop's mythical and martial arts origins.

Our favorite artists may not be our favorite people.

Louisa May Alcott is best known for Little Women, but she earned her first taste of celebrity as an essayist.

Even during the worst of war, the ring-shaped confections offered a bite of joy and a much-needed morale boost to weary soldiers during World War I.

Meet these slippery, mischievous reflections of our anxieties about technology.

On the 85th anniversary of the first xerographic print, a collection of punk flyers from Cornell University provides an object lesson on anti-art.

A new biography of Edith Hamilton tells the story of how and why ancient literature became widely read in the United States.

In a new biography, the Velvet Underground front man embodies a New York that exists only in memory.

During the New Deal, mass left movements and government funding spawned a boomlet in working-class art. For once, art wasn’t just the province of the rich.

Will Hermes's new biography, "Lou Reed: The King of New York," tries—and fails—to pin the rocker down.

Amid Reagan’s late-sixties crackdown on the California counterculture, a jury was tasked with deciding whether Lenore Kandel’s psychedelic sex poems had “redeeming social importance.”

How American Indians in Hollywood have gone from stereotypes to starring roles.

Touring the American soul.

‘Time Warp’ all the way back to the 1800s.

Springsteen's albums offer a tragic-romantic view of the working class in Reagan-era America.

Reflections on Pavement, Nirvana, the very meaning of history, and the end of neoliberalism.

“You know how many second basemen or shortstops I knocked on their ass in my career?”