Puritan Book Burning

What Links Religion and Authoritarianism?

The connections between religiousness and authoritarianism, studied for decades, depend upon the kind of religious belief.
JSTOR Daily Suggested Readings

Suggested Readings: Fake Surgery, Unending Plastic, and the Enduring Jane Austen

Well-researched stories from around the web that bridge the gap between news and scholarship. Brought to you each Tuesday from the editors of JSTOR Daily.
Sugar Beet Field

Did Youth Farming Programs Really Fight Juvenile Delinquency?

Summer jobs for teens are becoming a thing of the past, but considering these beet farm jobs, maybe we shouldn't romanticize them too much.
platinum-iridium cylinder

What’s a Kilogram?

At the end of the nineteenth century, the kilogram was conceived as the mass of one liter of water at 4°C, the temperature at which water was densest.
Chicken Tikka and lamb samosas

Indian Food is Not a Monolith

When you eat Indian food, what are you really eating? Chicken tikka masala was originally created to appease the palates of the British during the Raj.
Mexican-American studies protest

How Arizona Banned Mexican-American Studies

An Arizona court is hearing a case that could roll back a 2010 ban on teaching Mexican-American studies in the state.
Mad Magazine

How Mad Magazine Informed America’s Cultural Critique

When Tales Calculated to Drive You MAD—Humor in a Jugular Vein first erupted onto the streets in 1952, it was like nothing ever seen before.
WWI prosthetic arm

A Brief History of Prosthetic Limbs

Prosthetics have come a long way from the wooden big toe found on a a 3000-year-old mummy, or the Etruscan bridgework made of human teeth.
Pregnant woman portrait

When C-Sections Were Performed to Save Dead Babies’ Souls

In 1804, Charles IV, King of Spain, issued a legal admonition telling officials not to bury any pregnant woman without giving her a C-section first.
Obamacare signing

Access to Care Is Only Part of Public Health

While the U.S. debate over healthcare has been focused on Obamacare, we’ve been ignoring some other important aspects of health policy.