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The search for extraterrestrial life began with an unexpected question: How could humans keep from destroying the evidence?

European naturalists documented the peacock flower's medicinal uses but left its most consequential history behind.

The hunt for Charlie Wright exposed how convict leasing, labor tensions, and white supremacy shaped rural life in the Jim Crow South.

For nearly a century, Americans argued over how to honor George Washington. The monument they built reflected those debates.

In Southeast Asia, colonial legacies and citizenship policies continue to leave hundreds of thousands without legal nationality.

Can fruit flies have dialects? Can dung beetles navigate by the stars? Find surprising answers in this collection of stories about bugs and people.

An archive of recorded interviews captures how ordinary people experienced one of the defining chapters of American history.

Burroughs drew on the leading Maya scholarship of his day, much of which has since been overturned.

The near-extinction of the bison sparked an industry that left almost nothing of the animals behind.

The Victorian painter drew on archaeology and ancient texts to create richly detailed scenes of love and excess.