Filter by:

Filter by published date

Viewing 31–52 of 52 results. Go to first page
Dole pineapple cookbook featuring a pineapple upside down cake and a can of Dole sliced pineapple.

American Food Traditions That Started as Marketing Ploys

Your grandma didn't invent that recipe.
Peanuts' Franklin as a flat two-dimensional character.

It’s Flagrant Tokenism, Charlie Brown!

Peanuts’ Franklin has been a controversial character for decades. A new special attempts reparations.
Illustrtion of wild turkies on a sidewalk

The Return of the Wild Turkey

In New England, the birds were once hunted nearly to extinction; now they’re swarming the streets like they own the place. Sometimes turnabout is fowl play.

Lydia Maria Child Taught Americans to Make Do With Less

A popular writer’s 1829 self-help book ‘The Frugal Housewife’ was based on the same democratic principles that made her a champion of the abolitionist cause.
Yams under concrete with the leaves growing out of a crack in the sidewalk

The Deep and Twisted Roots of the American Yam

The American yam is not the food it says it is. How that came to be is a story of robbery, reinvention, and identity.

New England Once Hunted and Killed Humans for Money. We’re Descendants of the Survivors

The settlers who are mythologized at Thanksgiving as peace-loving Pilgrims were offering cash for Native American heads less than a generation later.
Man holding a Jack-O-Lantern.

Why Do We Carve Pumpkins Into Jack-O'-Lanterns For Halloween?

It's a tale thousands of years in the making.
Photo: "Mother Bird Protecting Her Young"

Motherhood at the End of the World

"My job as your mother is to tell you these stories differently, and to tell you other stories that don’t get told at school.”
Statue of Liberty, her face in shadow.

The United States Is Not “a Nation of Immigrants”

Celebrations of multiculturalism obscure the country’s settler colonial history—and the role that immigrants play in perpetuating it.
Rebecca, living the life at the 1927 White House Easter Egg Roll, with first lady Grace Coolidge.

When Rebecca the Raccoon Ruled the White House

Since we have new presidential pets, Champ and Major, we take a quick look back at one of the nation’s most famous four-legged White House inhabitants.

How America Keeps Adapting the Story of the Pilgrims at Plymouth to Match the Story We Need to Tell

The word “Plymouth” may conjure up visions of Pilgrims in search of religious freedom, but that vision does not reflect reality.
Pilgrims

Thank the Pilgrims for America's Tradition of Separatism, Division, and Infighting

They were not the nation's first settlers, but they were the most fractious.
Tepary beans, squash, and corn against a black background

Returning Corn, Beans, and Squash to Native American Farms

Returning the "three sisters" to Native American farms nourishes people, land, and cultures.
Boys holding a sign and working

What the Greatest Generation Had That the Covid Generation Lacks

Americans are no more selfish in 2020 than they were in the 1940s, the difference between the two moments is about national leadership, not national character.
Replica of the original Plimoth Plantation.

The Complicated Legacy of the Pilgrims is Finally Coming to Light After 400 Years

Descendants of the Pilgrims have highlighted their ancestors’ role in the country’s founding. But their sanitized version of events is only now starting to be told in full.
First Lady Grace Coolidge with the racoon that was meant to be dinner.

Why President Coolidge Never Ate His Thanksgiving Raccoon

A tradition as American as apple pie, and older than the Constitution.

Learning from Jamestown

The violent catastrophe of the Virginia colonists is the best founding parable of American history.
How a group of Red Power activists seized the abandoned prison island and their own destinies.

This Land is Our Land: The Native American Occupation of Alcatraz

From November 1969 to June 1971, 89 Red Power activists seized the abandoned prison island of Alcatraz, and their own destinies.
A painting entitled "The First Thanksgiving, 1621" by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris (ca. 1932).

The Dark Side of Nice

American niceness is the absolute worst thing to ever happen in human history.
Line graph of history BAs granted, peaking in the 1960s and declining in the 2010s.

Do We Know What History Students Learn?

It's not enough to say that they pick up critical thinking skills. It's time to offer evidence.
A painting of Boston harbor, where women in dresses stand on a hill, watching ships
partner

Invisible Cities, Continued

The 19th century recovery of John Winthrop's sermon, "A City on a Hill."
Candy corn.

Where Our Love/Hate Relationship With Candy Corn Comes From

Halloween's most iconic candy (and its most polarizing) used to be a year-round snack. Then came the candy corn explosion.

Filter Results:

Suggested Filters:

Idea

Person