UK research organisation Mass-Observation conducts a survey at the Nuffield Centre, a Service Club in Soho, to find out the preferred 'pin-up girl' of a number of servicemen, September 1944.

Yes, Mass Observation Still Wants to Know about Your Life

The organization has collected interviews and diaries recording ordinary life in Britain over the course of decades. A pandemic won't stop it now.
Hero shrew

Shrew Spines, COVID Mysteries, and Pandemic Poverty

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

How Reading Got Farm Women Through the Depression

They worked over sixty hours a week but were also insatiable readers.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, and former Russian President Boris Yeltsin attend an inauguration ceremony for Putin May 7, 2000 in the Kremlin in Moscow.

Was Russia Destined to Be an Autocracy?

The most important factors that steered Russia away from democracy, says one scholar, weren't inevitable.
The Loud Family, 1973

Remembering Craig Gilbert and An American Family

The twelve-part documentary chronicling a family's dissolution was one of the most talked-about TV shows of the past fifty years.
Female Tailor Working From Home Inspects her PPE Mask

COVID-19 Has Laid Bare How Much We Value Women’s Work

And how little we pay for it.
A blue ocean below an almost cloudless sky

Escape Fantasies

From the archives: twelve tales of avoidance and self-preservation, right when you need them.
Plague column in Vienna, Austria

How to Memorialize a Plague

Vienna's baroque Plague Column, completed in 1693, gave thanks for the survival of a city.
A man with well-groomed hair

Why Some Men Go to Salons for Haircuts

The difference between a clipper cut at the barber shop and "pampering" at the salon has roots in gender ideology and class structure.
Shayla Lawson

Shayla Lawson: All of Us Came from the Same Root

The poet and essayist Shayla Lawson, author of This Is Major, talks about the meaning of race, Black History Month, and her love for Lizzo.