Culture

It lets us avoid harder questions about our culture.

Was Davy Crockett a sellout? And does it matter?

It became the first and only X-rated movie to win a best picture Oscar.

Contending with the orientalist fears and fantasies of a young nation.

For Herman Melville, the color white could be horrifyingly bleak.

With ‘Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood,’ Tarantino slakes his thirst for nostalgia while playing with another piece of history.

In the 50s and 60s, steamy novels about lesbian relationships, marketed to men, gave closeted women needed representation.

Margret and Hans A. Rey, the reluctant parents of a cartoon ape-child, always yearned to leave children’s literature behind.

People have passionate feelings about the oddball punctuation. Here are some things you probably didn't know about it.

We might say that these books are recording a life with music, and that they are worth listening to.

Barnum called himself the “Prince of Humbugs,” which left open the possibility that one day there would arise a king.

A schoolteacher created the popular board game, which celebrates its 70th anniversary this year, for quarantined children.

For a century, we’ve loved our cars. They haven’t loved us back.

The novelist drew on far-flung voyages to create his masterpiece. But he could finish it only at his beloved Berkshire farm.

The battle for the integration of Major League Baseball started long before Jackie Robinson.

The great showman taught us to love hyperbole, fake news, and a good hoax. A century and a half later, the show has escaped the tent.

When a DJ called on listeners to destroy disco records in a Chicago stadium, things turned nasty.

To understand America, you can start with Apollo 11 and all that is counterfactual that’s grown around it.

Why America's obsession with Ted Bundy needs to stop.

Poe’s story of a treasure hunt, revealing the fantastical writer’s hyper-rational penchant for cracking codes.

100 years ago, a tennis player shocked spectators with her “indecent” dress—not for the last time.

Beyond public accommodations and schools, resistance to integration included keeping pools and amusement parks segregated.

It’s time to move past the tech sector’s creator myths.

Only in the science fiction genre can one compare an alien to a woman.

The storied African American newspaper will switch to a digital-only platform starting July 11.

Nostalgia or nightmare?

The long and complicated life of Kipling's famous poem.

It took decades for the "flag cult" as we know it to get rolling.

How was the Fourth of July celebrated during the Revolutionary War?

The Boston Symphony’s refusal to play the national anthem in its one concerts triggered a xenophobic panic that led an arrest.