Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling in America

What happened to the great defender of Empire when he settled in the States?

Gump Talk

25 years later, what does Gump mean?

For 40 Years, Crashing Trains Was One of America’s Favorite Pastimes

From 1896 until the 1930s, showmen would travel the country staging wrecks at state fairs.

Ronald Reagan’s Reel Life

Did the movies ever matter? They did to Ronald Reagan.

A Brief History of the S'more, America’s Favorite Campfire Snack

So gooey, so good.

“Swinging While I’m Singing”: Spike Lee, Public Enemy, and the Message in the Music

Public Enemy's "Fight the Power," featured in Spike Lee's "Do the Right Thing," embodied many sentiments of a black generation.
McDonald's parking lot.

A Crispy, Salty, American History of Fast Food

Adam Chandler’s new book explores the intersection between fast food and U.S. history.
This photo, taken on the Minnesota frontier, depicts Regina Sorenson and three others "dressed in men's suits." MINNESOTA HISTORICAL SOCIETY

The Forgotten Trans History of the Wild West

Despite a seeming absence from the historical record, people who did not conform to traditional gender norms were a part of daily life in the Old West.

Why Pete Buttigieg's Theory About Secretly Gay Presidents Is Complicated

Buttigieg believes he probably won’t be the first gay president if he’s elected in 2020.

The Fitness Craze That Changed the Way Women Exercise

Fifty years after Jazzercise was founded, it is still shaping how Americans work out—for better or for worse.

William S. Burroughs and the Cult of Rock ‘n’ Roll

From Bob Dylan to David Bowie to The Beatles, the legendary Beat writer’s influence reached beyond literature into music in surprising ways.
Dr. Strange Love, from the Stanley Kubrick film of the same name

Watching the End of the World

The Doomsday Clock is set to two minutes to midnight. So why don't we make movies about nuclear war anymore?

What Maketh a Man

How queer artist J.C. Leyendecker invented an iconography of twentieth-century American masculinity.

“1984” at Seventy

Why we still read Orwell’s book of prophecy.

A Short History of Country Music’s Multicultural Mishmash

Or everything that came before Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus walked down that “Old Town Road.”
Portrait of Anne Lister

The 19th Century Lesbian Made for 21st Century Consumption

Jeanna Kadlec considers Anne Lister, the center figure of HBO’s Gentleman Jack, and the influence of other preceding queer women.

The Persistent Ghost of Ayn Rand, the Forebear of Zombie Neoliberalism

A review of Lisa Duggan's book, "Mean Girl: Ayn Rand and the Culture of Greed.”
Photos of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller

The Conflicted Love Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller

How an intense unclassifiable relationship shaped the history of modern thought.
Image of Sergeant Pete Thibodeau during the War on Terror.

The Sum of All Beards

How did facial hair win American men’s hearts and minds? Thank the War on Terror.

To Evade Pre-Prohibition Drinking Laws, New Yorkers Created the World's Worst Sandwich

It was everywhere at the turn of the 20th century. It was also inedible.
Unidentified African American soldier in Union uniform with wife and two daughters.

Race in Black and White

Slavery and the Civil War were central to the development of photography as both a technology and an art.

How Spaghetti Westerns Shaped Modern Cinema

In the realism, the set pieces, the operatic music, Sergio Leone was pointing the way towards modern filmmaking.
Daveed Diggs and Lin Manuel Miranda on stage in the musical Hamilton.

Notes Toward an Essay on Imagining Thomas Jefferson Watching a Performance of the Musical "Hamilton"

"But he'd have to acknowledge that the soul of his country is southern; the soul of his country is black."
An elderly Walt Whitman with his nurse Warren Fritzinger.

Walt Whitman's Boys

To appreciate who Whitman was, we have to reinterpret the poet in ways that have made generations of critical gatekeepers uncomfortable.

Rihanna Reveals the Story Behind her Latest Collection’s Imagery

How the 1960s Black Is Beautiful movement inspired her latest Fenty fashion collection.

Whitman, Melville, & Julia Ward Howe: A Tale of Three Bicentennials

The difference between the careers and reputations of the three famous authors is about gender as well as genius.

When Pat Buchanan Brought Johnny Cash to the Nixon White House

It didn't go exactly as planned. But for TAC's founder, this is where his populist antiwar movement may have begun.
Sparkle Moore performing with guitar

New Web Project Immortalizes the Overlooked Women Who Helped Create Rock and Roll in the 1950s

Hundreds—or maybe thousands—of women and girls performed and recorded rock and roll in its early years.

Odetta Holmes’ Album One Grain of Sand

Odetta’s artistry was a weapon in the Civil Rights struggle, and was crucial to the era’s politics.

‘Orientalism,’ Then and Now

Edward Said's Orientalism is still with us forty years after his influential book’s publication, but it is not the same as it was.