The historic Buffalo Creek flood tore through a region often exploited by industry—and stereotyped by outsiders.

"Social problem" films were all the rage after World War II. So how could movies about racism be so conservative?

Travelers brought the Chinese game to American shores in the early 1920s. Why was it such a hit?

Well-researched stories from the New York Times, Vox, and other publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.

As one activist said, “If our story is to be told, we will have to write it and photograph it and disseminate it ourselves.”

Nineteenth-century biologists employed some outrageous arguments in order to keep women confined to the home.

The 1896 version of crime sensationalism also taught the victim-blaming lesson “Stay Sexy, Don’t Get Murdered.”

In the mid-nineteenth century, the law was ambiguous.

In one river town in central Illinois, a wetlands called N— Lake was scapegoated for destructive flooding.

For some sand-dwelling plants, stickiness is a defense tactic that keeps predators at bay.