Culture

RJ Smith’s biography of Chuck Berry examines his subject’s instinct for crossing the line musically, racially, and morally.

A conversation about "the gains and pains of America’s exercise obsession."

In the streets of New York, we try to imagine the city as Walt Whitman, and other artists of his time, experienced it.

The reissue of “Tim” shows both the prescience and the unrealized promise of the beloved band.

Inmates at this bucolic but brutal prison have long been singing the blues to sustain themselves, and a new compilation of gospel songs continues the legacy.

The most hypnotic piece of music released so far in 2023 was recorded forty-seven years ago in a barely adequate studio in Rockland County, New York.

Sly and the Family Stone suggested new possibilities in music and life—until it all fell apart.

The 1960 film was penned by two blacklisted Communist writers. Its arrival in theaters was a middle finger to the McCarthyist witch hunt in Hollywood.

The famed opera has been criticized for its racist portrayals of Asian-Americans.

Like the spies themselves, the image we have of something is often what gets us in trouble.

A windowless telecommunications hub, 33 Thomas Street in New York City embodies an architecture of surveillance and paranoia, an ideal set for conspiracy thrillers.

It was a year that showcased the audacious talent in Hollywood experimenting with darker themes and new film techniques.

Considering the suppressed legacy of Claude McKay’s two “lost” novels, “Amiable with Big Teeth” and “Romance in Marseille.”

Harriet Beecher Stowe said that Josiah Henson’s life had inspired her most famous character. But Henson longed to be recognized by his own name.

Why is surfing still stuck in the 1960s when women have always done it?

Advanced Placement courses are no recipe for igniting the intellect beyond high school. They’re a recipe for extinguishing it.

How the failed search for a silent film uncovered a lost musician of the Harlem Renaissance.

During World War II, proto–music videos called “soundies” blared pop patriotism from visual jukeboxes across American bars.

The forgotten figure symbolized the hopes—and myths—of the early United States.

A short history of hand-colored photos during the Civil War era.

From European streets to Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Jews have been deeply involved in the history of coffee and the café scene.

On the Road with Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and John Burroughs.

In Hip hop’s “golden era,” the period from 1987 to 1994, rappers used their platforms to bring attention to issues plaguing poor and working-class Black communities.

How August Wilson became one of the country’s most influential playwrights.

How a style steeped in American elitism took over the world.

“The Lost Colony” had dramatized American mythology in the Outer Banks since 1937 with White actors as Indians. Now, Native performers are rewriting the story.

The actor and martial arts star also wanted to be regarded as a poet-philosopher.

The Universal Hip Hop Museum is poised to bring an economic and cultural infusion to the borough where the genre was born and bred.

Smith collected rare books, paper airplanes, Pennsylvania Dutch tools—and harvested the folk music recordings that changed a generation.

A wrestler, a Sunday school teacher, and a mystery man walk into a studio.