February 14, 2024

Beyond the Famous Few:

Five Women Who Shaped Black History and Literature

Courtney Thorsson

One Sunday afternoon in February 1977, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Ntozake Shange, and several other Black women writers met at June Jordan’s Brooklyn apartment to eat gumbo, drink champagne, and talk about their work. Calling themselves “The Sisterhood,” the group—which...

February 7, 2024

Black Life in a Nazi Internment Camp:

The Art of Josef Nassy

Sarah Phillips Casteel

In July 1947, an exhibition of artworks created in Nazi concentration and internment camps was mounted in railway cars stationed in Brussels’s Gare du Nord. Included in the exhibition were several works by Josef Nassy, an artist from the Dutch...

February 1, 2024

Behind the Lines:

How Plagiarism Popularized the Harlem Renaissance

Adam McKible

The Harlem Renaissance made an early splash with millions of Americans through a blatant act of plagiarism. In March 1925, Alain Locke announced the flourishing of the New Negro in Harlem by guest editing “Harlem: Mecca of the New Negro,”...

January 30, 2024

Three Myths About Presidential Campaign Visits:

From Joe Biden’s Basement to Donald Trump’s Rallies

Christopher J. Devine

Did Joe Biden spend the 2020 campaign hiding in his basement? Did Hillary Clinton cost herself the 2016 election by not bothering to visit Wisconsin? Did Donald Trump’s rallies fire up his base and win him the presidency? To many...

January 23, 2024

Kimberly D. Acquaviva on The Handbook of LGBTQIA-Inclusive Hospice and Palliative Care

A year and a half after she published her first book about LGBTQIA-inclusive hospice and palliative care in 2017, Kimberly D. Acquaviva learned that her wife Kathy had ovarian cancer. When they were unable to find a local hospice with...

January 15, 2024

Israel, Palestine, and Martin Luther King Jr.’s Civil Rights Legacy

Roger Baumann

In mid-January each year, many Americans turn their attention to questions about the legacy of the historic civil rights era of the 1950s and ’60s in the United States. This annual period of national introspection focuses especially on Martin Luther...

January 2, 2024

California’s Conservatorships:

Why Britney Spears and Not the Most Vulnerable

Alex V. Barnard

As estimated 1.3 million Americans are living under conservatorships (also known as guardianships): legal arrangements by which a judge takes decision-making power away from a person with disabilities and gives it to a third party. A conservator then determines where...

December 27, 2023

Chick-fil-A in the Early Nineteenth Century

Joseph P. Slaughter

The fall semester is wrapping up at Wesleyan University, which includes my fall course Jesus Chicken—a class that explores the intersection of religion and business in America. For those unfamiliar, the course’s title refers to Chick-fil-A—a derisive moniker given to...

December 20, 2023

Why Democrats Need to Show Up in Rural America

Nicholas Jacobs and Daniel Shea

The widening gulf between rural and urban America is becoming the most serious political divide of our day. Support for Democrats, up and down the ballot, has plummeted throughout the countryside. Rural Americans are supposedly bigots, culturally backward, lazy, scared...

December 18, 2023

The Evolving Politics of the Rust Belt “Union Man”

Lainey Newman

In the heyday of American labor, the influence of local unions extended far beyond the workplace and conveyed fundamental worldviews, making blue-collar unionists into loyal Democrats who saw the party as on the side of the working man. Today, Republican-leaning groups...

December 11, 2023

James W. Cortada in Conversation with Robyn Massey About Inside IBM

James W. Cortada―a business historian who worked at IBM for many years―pinpoints the crucial role of corporate culture in IBM’s success. He provides an inside look at how this culture emerged and evolved over the course of nearly a century,...

December 4, 2023

Q&A: Andy Secher on The Trilobite Collector’s Guide

After a three-decade-long career in the rock ’n’ roll industry—during which he edited the heavy metal magazine Hit Parader, produced two music-oriented TV shows, and created Titanium Records—Andy Secher turned his attention towards another paramount interest: those strange, long-gone marine...