Told

The power of daytime talk shows — especially “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”

More than a century before GoPro, Thomas Stevens’ around-the-world bike ride vaulted first-person “sports porn” into the mainstream.

The filmmaker’s new documentary on Benjamin Franklin tells an old and misleading story.

Satire and an inflated sense of self-importance collide in a series of maps that goes back more than 100 years in American history.

Throughout history, the family bomb shelter has reflected the shifting optimism, anxieties, and cynicism of the nuclear age.

Digital archiving is shoddy and incomplete, and it will hamper the ability of future generations to understand the current era.

Before Americans worried about government or corporate surveillance, 19th-century criminals took advantage of a new technology to steal valuable information.

A new book tells the scandalous secrets of a forgotten 19th-century tycoon, Miriam Follin Peacock Squier Leslie Wilde, also known as Mrs. Frank Leslie.

Ukraine’s wartime communications strategies have roots in World War II.

The entire plot of Stanley Kubrick's Cold War satire turns around getting people on the phone.

For American journalists abroad in the interwar period, it paid to have enthusiasm, openness, and curiosity, but not necessarily a world view.

A new book tells the stories of four interwar writers who laid the groundwork for modern journalism.

The language of “sacrifice” reveals we’re stuck in a colonial mindset.

PBS NewsHour coverage of the hot wars of the Cold War.

Brothel guides tended to be small, making them easy to conceal. They also mimicked other publications to make it easier to hide the guides’ true purpose.

Martin Luther King, Jr.'s iconic speech, annotated with relevant scholarship on the literary, political, and religious roots of his words.

The language sustained a Jewish diasporan secular culture. Today, that heritage survives in a gritty corner of Queens to be claimed by a new generation.

Nixon portrayed himself as a victim of the press. But from the 1952 Checkers speech through his post-presidency, he proved to be an able manipulator of the media.

Jackalopes have migrated from Wyoming across the nation, but what’s really known about the mythical creature?

The 1876 presidential election, Potter Committee, and European perceptions.

Digging deeper, offering historical context and going beyond official narratives will better serve the audience.

Long before the Wordle mania, there was the crossword puzzle craze. And newspapers condemned them as a dangerous menace to society.

At the back of the book, the index provides a space for reference—and sometimes revenge.

How rooting for American athletes became part of Olympic TV coverage.

Slavery’s a sensitive subject, but so is the question of who gets to be an authority about language.

Efforts to clamp down on White House leaks to the press follow a pattern that was set during the Nixon era after the publication of the Pentagon Papers.

The Bidens' new cat Willow will be the first feline in the White House since the George W. Bush years, but is part of a long tradition.

Bunk's American History Top 40.

Understanding the meaning of the word "slut" in the Founders' vocabulary.

Did the iconic three-note sequence come from Stravinsky, the Muppets or somewhere else? Our writer set out to – dun, dun duuuun! – reveal the mystery.