Told

Christopher Nolan's blockbuster has generated a torrent of historical commentary about the birth of nuclear weapons. Is there something missing from the conversation?

How cable TV transformed politics—and how politics transformed cable TV.

Richard Nixon decided a powerful new medium should appeal to the marketplace, not to citizens.

Whatever writing is today, it is not self-evident. But writing by hand did not simply continue to “advance” until it inevitably began to erode.

Martin’s confession relates outlaw adventures that appear to be original. But were they real? 

The photojournalist Bud Lee captured the riots of 1967 and the human cost of the brutal police crackdown.

Meet the feuding twin sisters who popularized the American advice column.

Though technologies have altered information warfare, the underlying principles remain unchanged since the day-to-day operations of the Continental Army.

Despite facing political headwinds and raising 'suspicion' among publishers, 'Reading Rainbow' introduced generations of American kids to books.

Penmanship was once considered a window to the soul. The digital age has closed it.

In the 1940s, a series of books tried to use the conventions of detective fiction to expose the degree of prejudice in postwar America.

The internet has expanded how we understand the possibilities of the trans experience.

It was actually from a 1950s antisemitic and white supremacist magazine. Who cares?

The voice of Doctor Johnson, archcritic of the American Revolution, was constantly in mind for the Declaration of Independence’s drafter.

The Civil War general's reputation was shaped by partisan politics, editorial whims and his own personal failings.

How abolitionists viewed the American flag.

The view from nowhere came from somewhere.

“Forced labor” conflates different forms of labor throughout history and minimizes the uniquely brutal conditions of chattel slavery.

In 1941 an ambitious Philadelphia pediatrician, the wonderfully named Waldo Emerson Nelson, became the editor of America’s leading textbook of pediatrics.

‘Time’ magazine and the unraveling of the American consensus.

She was a woman, but she was not the author of the speech attributed to her in popular lore.

In the late Sixties, countercultural media was distributed by the Underground Press Syndicate and bankrolled by marijuana.

A better understanding of propaganda and how to use it as an educational tool could advance the world in a positive way.

Look closely—very closely—at a Sunday comic strip in a printed newspaper.

Alex Haley’s transcript of his famous 'Playboy' interview with Martin Luther King Jr. does not match what was published.

Is the century-old battle metaphor doing more harm than good to doctors and patients alike?

During the interwar years, the American journalist reported on political unrest in Cuba, Germany and Spain.

Ben Smith’s book on the history of the viral internet doesn’t truly reckon with the costs of traffic worship.

As ‘The Jerry Springer Show’ climbed the ratings ladder, the censorship bleep became a star of the show.