We’re Going to Need a Bigger Note
Song sharks have been a problem for aspiring lyricists nearly as long as there’s been a music industry.
The USSR’s “Invisible Cuisine”
Unofficial cookbooks—handwritten recipes passed from kitchen to kitchen—provided their owners with social and cultural capital within the Soviet system.
Why Learn to Read?
The value placed on literacy has changed over time, shifting from a nineteenth-century moral imperative to a twentieth-century production necessity.
The Poetry Contest Edna St. Vincent Millay Lost
Though her writing career opened in an inauspicious manner, Edna St. Vincent Millay became the first woman to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.
Asian South America
The migration of Asian people—from India, from China, from Japan—to South America and the Caribbean began as early as the sixteenth century.
American as Apple Pie
How marketing made guns a fundamental element of contemporary boyhood.
The Story Behind “This is Your Brain on Drugs”
How did the campaign behind the Partnership for a Drug Free America’s iconic commercials develop, and why were its products so memorable?
Grief, Animism, and the Bestseller List
Well-researched stories from The Atlantic, Public Books, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.
Gender, Meat-Eating, and British Colonialism
As the power of the East India Company grew, British writers embraced the idea that the (alleged) passiveness of Indians was due in part to vegetarianism.
The Imperative to Buy the Best Stroller
The baby stroller is only the most visible symbol of the ethos of consumer capitalism that saturates American pregnancy and parenthood.