Richard S. Slotkin

Is the United States a prisoner of its own mythology?

Myths to explain American history and chart a path to the future once helped to bind the country together. Today, they are absorbed into the culture wars.

The captivity narrative as creation myth.

How Buffalo Bill’s Wild West brought scenes from the American West to audiences around the globe.

Or, why families under siege make for great movies.

Steps from Georgetown, a memorial to Teddy Roosevelt stands amid ghosts of previous inhabitants: the Nacotchtank, colonist enslavers, and the emancipated.

The “forgotten American” mythology of the POW/MIA movement continues to haunt our politics today.

The rise of tactical gun culture among civilians reveals a new front in the U.S. battle against nativist authoritarianism.

From the 80s onwards, the borderlands were rife with paramilitary cruelty and racism. But the president’s rhetoric has thrown fuel on the fire.