The Earth drawn as a baseball flying through space.

Climate Change Comes for Baseball

The summer sport is facing big questions about how it will adapt.
Portrait of Ena and Betty Wertheimer by John Singer Sargent, 1901.

Friend of the Family

Jean Strouse explores the relationship between the Anglo-Jewish Wertheimers and John Singer Sargent, who painted twelve portraits of them.
A sketch of a woman praying outside.

“To Eat This Big Universe as Her Oyster”

Margaret Fuller and the first major work of American feminism.
Leatherface swinging a chainsaw branded with the American flag.

It Might Be the Scariest Movie Ever Made. There’s Never Been a Better Time to Watch It.

The vibes right now are very "Texas Chain Saw Massacre."
Screen shot from Carrie in which a bloody hand grabs a girl.

The Startling History of the Jump Scare

From 1942's "Cat People" to cerebral jolts in "Hereditary" and "Get Out," this cinematic scare tactic still shocks.
Paintings by John Singer Sargent: Asher Wertheimer, 1898 (left) and Hylda, Almina and Conway, Children of Asher Wertheimer, 1905 (center), London. Portrait of Mrs. Asher B. Wertheimer, 1898 (right).

A Sudden, Revealing Searchlight

On Jean Strouse and the art of biography.
George Washington

Drink Like a Founding Father

Make one of President George Washington's favorite cocktails.
An old, crumbling Victorian house with figures from horror, including Toni Collette in Hereditary, a zombie, Edgar Allen Poe, and Stephen King.

American Horror Stories

It just might be the great American art form. You can thank the residents of Salem for that.
Drawing of a competetitve pedestrian walking in the late 1800s with spectators watching.

America’s Earliest Sports Stars Were … Professional Walkers?

Walking needs no publicist. The simplest, most accessible form of exercise has been around since humans first foraged and traveled on the ground.
Photo by Ralph Ellison of men standing by a street in New York City.

Ralph Ellison’s Alchemical Camera

The novelist's aestheticizing impulse contrasts with the relentless seriousness of his observations and critiques of American society.
Soldiers in combat gear stand by an advertisement for "America's Army," a military strategy game from 2002.

Video Games Are a Key Battleground in the Propaganda War

When video games went mainstream, the Pentagon realized their potential as a promotional tool, spending hundreds of millions of dollars on war-based games.
Illustration of Willie Mayes holding a baseball bat, while men watch from the city.

A Giant of a Man

The legacy of Willie Mays and the Birmingham ballpark where he first made his mark.
A car in a dark night on an empty road with a ghostly apparition.

The Vanishing Hitchhiker Legend Is an Ancient Tale That Keeps Evolving

The classic creepy story—a driver offers a lift to a stranger who is not of this world—has deep roots and a long reach.
Sanora Babb

The Woman Who Would Be Steinbeck

John Steinbeck beat Sanora Babb to the great American Dust Bowl novel—using her field notes. What do we owe her today?
Cover of American Scary by Jeremy Dauber.

The Historical Seeds of Horror in "American Scary"

Jeremy Dauber's new book explores the themes and origins of the American horror genre.
Picture of a baseball card of designated runner, Herb Washington.

Speed Kills

Two striking reminders of the game-changing potential of great speed and its limited value unless accompanied by other essential skills.
Henry Fonda

Straight Shooter

"Henry Fonda for President" more than makes the case for Fonda’s centrality in the American imaginary.
Mike Dirnt, Billy Joe Armstrong, and Tré Cool from the band Green Day.

How Green Day’s American Idiot Pitted Punk Against George W Bush

Twenty years ago, a trio of Calfornian stoners released a polemic against Republican America that politicised a generation.
Dole pineapple cookbook featuring a pineapple upside down cake and a can of Dole sliced pineapple.

American Food Traditions That Started as Marketing Ploys

Your grandma didn't invent that recipe.
A drawing of an angry, long-haired cat holding a sign that reads "Vote for Shes."

A Purrrrfect Political Storm

Crazy cat ladies have come to dominate this election season. It’s hardly the first time.
Movie poster of The Birth of a Nation depicting a Ku Klux Klan member as a knight.

How the Work of Thomas Dixon Shaped White America’s Racist Fantasies

On the literary and cinematic legacy of white supremacy in the United States.
Autumn, an 1856 sunset landscape painting by Frederic Church.

The Sound of the Picturesque

Charles Ives and the visual.
The Eagle Hotel in July 1913 decorated for the 50th anniversary of the battle of Gettysburg.

Battle Hymns

Charles Ives and the Civil War.
The title card for Little House of a Prairie on a green hill.

50 Years Ago: America Loved a Little House

The beloved family show left a lasting legacy.
National Book Award seal.

How Historical Fiction Redefined the Literary Canon

In contemporary publishing, novels fixated on the past rather than the present have garnered the most attention and prestige.
partner

Books That Speak of Books

How a subgenre of murder mysteries plays with the way real history is written.
19th-century painting: "Talking it Over"

How Prairie Philosophy Democratised Thought in 19th-century America

How two amateur schools pulled a generation of thinkers from the workers and teachers of the 19th-century American Midwest.
Gustav Mahler; Charles Ives.

Anchoring Shards of Memory

We don’t often associate Charles Ives and Gustav Mahler, but both composers mined the past to root themselves in an unstable present.
The original cover sketch of "Cars and Trucks and Things That Go," by Richard Scarry, with cartoon animals in vehicles.

On Richard Scarry and the Art of Children's Literature

Scarry’s guides to life both reflected and bolstered kids’ lived experience, and in some cases even provided the template for it.
Audre Lorde

A Book That Puts the Life Back Into Biography

To capture the spirit of the poet Audre Lorde, Alexis Pauline Gumbs decided to break all the rules.