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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.
by Anne Blue Wills, Livia Gershon via JSTOR Daily on November 26, 2014
Woodcut illustration of "Witches Apprehended" showing the water test accused witches would undergo. Stamford has its own history of witch trials.

Haunted Stamford: 1692 Witch Trial

In the same year as the Salem Witch Trials, a more common and lesser known witch hunt occurred in Stamford, Connecticut.
by Maggie Gordon via Stamford Advocate on October 31, 2013
Harriet Beecher Stowe imagining her characters.

“Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and the Art of Persuasion

Stowe’s novel shifted public opinion about slavery so dramatically that it has often been credited with fuelling the war that destroyed the institution.
by Annette Gordon-Reed via The New Yorker on June 6, 2011
The Founding of Maryland by Emmanuel Leutze (1634).

Bejesuited: America’s First Catholics

A history of Catholic immigration and activity in colonial North America.
by Malcolm Gaskill via London Review of Books on November 28, 2025
Children eating Thanksgiving dinner in Harlem.

Make Thanksgiving Radical Again

The holiday’s real roots lie in abolition, liberation, and anti-racism. Let’s reconnect to that legacy.
by Kali Holloway via The Nation on November 27, 2025
‘The First Thanksgiving, 1621,’ by Jean L. G. Ferris. Library of Congress

How the Plymouth Pilgrims Took Over Thanksgiving – and Who History Left Behind

In some ways, Thanksgiving is a tradition that unites Americans. But the classic image of the Pilgrims obscures important parts of the country’s story.
by Thomas A. Tweed via The Conversation on November 13, 2025
Five men sharing a meal in Qing dynasty China.

Splitting Hairs

Chinese immigrants, the queue, and the boundaries of political citizenship.
by Sarah Gold McBride via The Public Domain Review on July 9, 2025

The Sum of Our Wisdom

We are told that we are a Calvinist culture, which means very little, and none of that good.
by Marilynne Robinson via The Hedgehog Review on March 18, 2025
Robert Frost.

Chapters and Verse

Looking for the poet between the lines.
by Jay Parini via The American Scholar on March 3, 2025
Abstract painting of people embracing.

The Forgotten History of Sex in America

Today’s battles over issues like gender nonconformity and reproductive rights have antecedents that have been lost or suppressed. What can we learn from them?
by Rebecca Mead via The New Yorker on August 26, 2024

How America’s Rich Legacy of Fear and Hatred Fuels the Conspiracy Theories of Today

Panic about Catholics, Freemasons, and, later, Jews, is deeply woven into American history, and forms the basis of our fertile culture of conspiracy theorizing.
by Arthur Goldwag via Talking Points Memo on June 21, 2024
Illustration of a man typing on his laptop on a rollercoaster ride.

Work Sucks. What Could Salvage It?

New books examine the place of work in our lives—and how people throughout history have tried to change it.
by Erik Baker via The New Yorker on May 1, 2024
Children in a kindergarten classroom at the Horace Mann School, Tulsa, Okla., 1917.
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Yes, Schools Should Teach Morality. But Whose Morals?

Belief that schools must teach moral values is older than public schools themselves. But whose morals?
by Mallory Hutchings-Tryon via Made By History on January 9, 2024
A crowd of tourist superimposed over images of Salem attractions and a cemetery.

Salem’s Unholy Bargain: How Tragedy Became an Attraction

Is the cost worth the payoff?
by Lex Pryor via The Ringer on October 30, 2023
Thomkins H. Matteson's painting of George Jacobs' witchcraft trial in 1855

The Salem Witch Trials Actually Happened in Danvers, Massachusetts

Tensions between Salem and Danvers were there from the start—contributing to the ensuing witch hysteria.
by Theresa McKinney via Atlas Obscura on October 26, 2023
A drawing of a woman looking inside the door of a church where children are playing.

The Quiet Revolution of the Sabbath

Requiring rest, rather than work, is still a radical idea.
by Casey N. Cep via The New Yorker on September 30, 2023
Painting of the english surgeon Edward Jenner inoculating a child.

How Far Back Were Africans Inoculating Against Smallpox? Really Far Back.

When I looked at the archives, I found a history hidden in plain sight.
by Elise A. Mitchell via Slate on September 4, 2023

Doing the Work

The Protestant ethic and the spirit of wokeness.
by Ian Buruma via Harper’s on June 20, 2023
Map of John Proctor's 15 acres of property in Ipswich, MA

"The Crucible" and John and Elizabeth Proctor of Salem

It is worth digging a bit deeper into the family matters between John and Elizabeth.
by Benjamin Ray via Commonplace on February 7, 2023
Cover page of "Cotton Mather's Spanish Lessons." Beige cover with a small red image of a tonsured monastic scribe with a book in front of him, evidentally engaged in scholarship.

Structures of Belonging and Nonbelonging

A Spanish-language pamphlet by Cotton Mather explodes the Black-versus-white binary that dominates most discussions of race in our time.
by Joseph Rezek via Los Angeles Review of Books on February 1, 2023
Samuel Adams.

Hanged on a Venerable Elm

The shadow of Samuel Adams, a crafty and government-wary revolutionary, lingers over the January 6 Capitol insurrection.
by Colin Kidd via London Review of Books on January 25, 2023
People sitting on a hill overlooking a harbor

How We Became Weekly

The week is the most artificial and recent of our time counts yet it’s impossible to imagine our shared lives without it.
by David Hinkin via Aeon on November 30, 2021

Why the History of the Vast Early America Matters Today

There is no American history without the histories of Indigenous and enslaved peoples. And this past has consequences today.
by Karin Wulf via Aeon on July 15, 2021
Illustration of the Salem Witch Trials, with a "witch" appearing to levitate books

My Witch-Hunt History, and America's: A Personal Journey to 1692

Revisiting America's first witch hunt — and discovering how much of it was a family affair. My family, that is.
by Andrew O'Hehir via Salon on July 4, 2021
Detail of Anti-Slavery Picnic at Weymouth Landing, Massachusetts (c1845) by Susan Torrey Merritt. Courtesy the Art Institute of Chicago

New England Kept Slavery, But Not Its Profits, At a Distance

Entangled with, yet critical of, colonial oppression and the evils of slavery, the true history of Boston can now be told.
by Mark A. Peterson via Aeon on May 3, 2021
Medical men wearing masks at a US Army hospital

Why Do We Forget Pandemics?

Until the Covid-19 pandemic, the catastrophe of the Spanish flu had been dropped from American memory.
by Nina Burleigh via The Nation on April 26, 2021
A man standing at a crossroads holding an American flag.

The Wasting of the Evangelical Mind

The peculiarities of how American Christianity took shape help explain believers’ vulnerability to conspiratorial thinking and misinformation.
by Michael Luo via The New Yorker on March 4, 2021
The book cover for "They Knew They Were Pilgrims."

A History of the Pilgrims That Neither Idolizes Nor Demonizes Them

Historian John Turner tells the story of Plymouth Colony with nuance and care.
by Grant Wacker via The Christian Century on January 14, 2021

On the Insidious ‘Laziness Lie’ at the Heart of the American Myth

Devon Price wonders why we equate sloth with evil.
by Devon Price via Literary Hub on January 6, 2021

The Edge of the Map

Monsters have always patrolled the margins of the map. By their very strangeness, they determined the boundaries of the regular world.
by Colin Dickey via The Paris Review on July 23, 2020
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