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Woman holding a turkey on a platter.
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The Modern Invention of Thanksgiving

The holiday emerged not from the 17th century, but rather from concerns over immigration and urbanization in the 19th century.
Eleanor Kirk

How to Pitch a Magazine (in 1888)

Eleanor Kirk's guide offered a way to break into the boys’ club of publishing.
Joseph Dennie.

Was the Federalist Press Staid and Apolitical?

Quite the contrary. They used rhetoric to build a partisan community, and realized that parties needed to create and market identities, not simply agendas.
Illustration of Kim Kardashian taking a selfie with drawn-on glasses and hat to resemble James Joyce.

James Joyce, Like Kim Kardashian, Understood a Sex Scandal Could Be Good for Business

'Blank Space' and 'A Danger to the Minds of Young Girls' examine capitalism and the arts in different eras.
Walter Lippmann on the ocean liner Conte di Savoia.

Walter Lippmann’s Phantom Publics

Arguably no American journalist wielded as much influence as Walter Lippmann did in the 20th century. But what did he do with that power?
A copy of Billboard features an image of Michael Jackson on the cover.

Bring Back Recurrents

How a decision sparked by the death of one of the world’s biggest pop stars knocked the Billboard 200 out of alignment.
Black and white photograph of Claude McKay

Letters from Claude McKay

Correspondence about writing, travel, and friendship, from 1926 through 1929.
Photo collage of 20th century women's fashion.

The 20th Century Designer Who Put Common Sense Into Women’s Fashion

A new book recognizes Claire McCardell as a pioneer of American womenswear as we know it.
Collage of women's faces in outlines of women's bodies

What Did the Pop Culture of the Two-Thousands Do to Millennial Women?

“Girl on Girl,” by the critic Sophie Gilbert, is the latest in a series of consciousness-raising-style reappraisals of the decade’s formative texts.
Drawings of women authors

How Margaret Fuller Set Minds on Fire

High-minded and scandal-prone, a foe of marriage who dreamed of domesticity, Fuller radiated a charisma that helped ignite the fight for women’s rights.
Magazine ad of raccoons playing computer games.

The Raccoons Who Made Computer Magazine Ads Great

In the 1980s and 1990s, PC Connection built its brand on a campaign starring folksy small-town critters. They’ll still charm your socks off.
Edgar Watson Howe

The Sins and Sayings of E.W. Howe

A deeply skeptical, deeply American mind and its trail of sharp, clean sentences.
Front cover of the 1940 issue Anvil by John C. Rogers showing a muscular man in bold red strokes.

Anvil, the Forgotten Magazine of Heartland Marxism

Anvil's popular vision for a multiracial socialism in the heart of the US could hardly be more urgent today.
David Bowie singing into a microphone wearing a feather boa and tights.

How Pop Came Out of the Closet

Jon Savage’s “The Secret Public” traces the influence of queer artists on a hostile culture.
Kendrick Lamar in the spotlight performing a concert.

Bad Beef

Rap beef is form of capitalist accumulation that enriches artists—and, most of all, the corporate suits that run their record labels.
A bird perched on top of a broken tree trunk, surrounded by snow covered bushes and trees.
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For the Birds

In 1973, the Christmas Bird Count formed the basis for a press freedom case that centered on the impacts of DDT.
A large crowd of women marching in New York City for the Women's Strike for Equality in 1970.

When the Personal Was Political

Second-wave feminists meant business—but they had a lot of fun at it, too.
Newspapers showcasing the victory of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump
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Close Elections Signal a New Gilded Age

Donald Trump’s 2024 win, echoing the Gilded Age, highlights America’s volatile, close elections, partisan divides, and structural barriers shaping politics.
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The Forebears of J.D. Vance and the New Right

Revisiting the Agrarian-Distributists and their fabrication of an American past.
A crystal ball reflecting a landscape.

50 Years Later: Remembering How the Future Looked in 1974

A half-century ago, "Saturday Review" asked some of the era's visionaries for their predictions of what 2024 would look like. Here are their hits and misses.
Henry Ward Beecher.

When Preachers Were Rock Stars

A classic New Yorker account of the Henry Ward Beecher adultery trial recalls a time in America that seems both incomprehensible and familiar.
John Thorn photographed in front of baseball memorabilia.

How Baseball’s Official Historian Dug Up the Game’s Unknown Origins

A lifelong passion for the national pastime led John Thorn to redefine the sport's relationship with statistics and reveal the truth behind its earliest days.
Oscar Wilde

“A Nation of Lunatics.” What Oscar Wilde Thought About America

On the Irish writer’s grand tour of the Gilded Age United States.
Woman creating a "zine", using a presumably Xerox photocopy machine.

American Counterculture, Glimpsed Through Zines

Zine-making is a tradition shared by the young and alienated, people enamored with the fringes of culture. Can a museum exhibit capture its essence?
Image from the filmstrip, showing a grieved woman with her head in her hands, being comforted by a man standing beside her

Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the Hands of the Red Scared

Again and again, a fervant British anticommunist's filmstrip of the novel shows images of women in states of distress.
Tom Wolfe in profile against the New York City skyline.

The Electric Kool-Aid Conservative

Tom Wolfe was no radical.
Ginger R. Stephens (center), a Virginia leader of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, joined other celebrants at a 2018 commemoration of Jefferson Davis’s birthday.

Yes, They’re Pro-Confederacy. But They’re Just the Nicest Ladies!

You can call the United Daughters of the Confederacy a lot of things. But racist? Why, some of their best friends…
Article about the KKK from an old copy of the Atlantic

What The Atlantic Got Wrong About Reconstruction

In 1901, a series of articles took a dim view of the era, and of the idea that all Americans ought to participate in the democratic process.
Self-Portrait, by Samuel Joseph Brown Jr., a painting of a Black man looking at a portrait of himself.

A Right to Paint Us Whole

W.E.B. Du Bois’ message to African American artists.
A family listening to radio in the 1930s.
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Today's Media Landscape Took Root a Century Ago

Decisions made now could shape the next 100 years.

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