Boy Scouts Pick Fruit For Jam at a Fruit-picking Camp Near Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England, 1944

Skipping School for Harvest Camp

As more young adults joined the military or worked in wartime industries, England turned to children to fill the growing gap in agricultural labor.
Photograph: Chinese workers  on the Oregon and California Railroad, circa 1888.  

Source: Getty

The Chinese Exclusion Act: Annotated

The passing of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 marked the first time the United States prohibited immigration based on ethnicity and national origin.
Ornament for title page of The Columbian Magazine for the year 1789

Reading Aloud in the Early Republic

Magazines of the freshly founded United States drew legitimacy and stability from the collective voice and sociability of their editors.
T.S. Eliot and Groucho Marx

All Male Cats Are Named Tom: Or, the Uneasy Symbiosis between T. S. Eliot and Groucho Marx

Class and religious differences, among other factors, thwarted the would-be friendship between two cultural titans, suggesting opposites attract, but may not adhere.
Arachis hypogaea, Warren Delano collection of Chinese export paintings of fruits, flowers, and vegetables, ca. 1794–1852, Botany Libraries.

Plant of the Month: Peanut

The peanut, a natural hybrid of two species, originated in Bolivia. It now plays a critical role in food cultures around the world.
An advertisement for Jell-O Salad

A New Kind of Language, Moon Plants, and Jell-O Salads

Well-researched stories from The New Yorker, Ars Technica, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.
Print shows men and women riding bicycles and tricycles to a fair, 1819

Celebrating the Bicycle

JSTOR Daily editors pick their favorite stories for National Bike Month.
Clockwise: Sun Ra, Betty Davis, Janelle Monáe, Erykah Badu, and Jimi Hendrix

The Scholars Who Charted Black Music’s Timeline: Tony Bolden

Tony Bolden explores the spiritual principles that inform the foundation of Afrofuturist music.
Carl Friedrich Christian Fasch

From Screaming to Singing

How one German choir changed the way we think about, practice, and perform choral music.
The gravestone of Ginger Goodwin

Was There a Conspiracy to Kill a Canadian Labor Activist?

While conspiracy theories about Ginger Goodwin’s death may interest some, these complicated explanations deflect our attention from real issues.