Scottish singer and actress Lulu listens to a small portable Rhapsody DeLuxe radio

Music Only for a Woman: The Birth of Easy Listening

A 1970s radio format geared towards the "feminine psyche" featured musical rearrangements with softer and gentler styles of the day's hits.
The Kim Sisters with Dean Martin

Ladies and Gentlemen, It’s The Kim Sisters

The diversification of talent on American variety shows obscured the reality of race relations in the United States during the Cold War.
Lee Kwong family photo, ca. 1907. Standing (l.-r.): Aurelia, Percy, Carmen, and Luisa. Seated (l.-r. ): Concepcion, Lai Ngan, Teresa, Frank, Lee Kwong, and Marian.

From Bond Maid to Pioneering Chinese Businesswoman

Raised as a servant girl, Lai Ngan grew up to become a cigar maker, own a boarding house, and run grocery stores in the American Southwest.
Mary and Carl Bach

The Gruesome History of Ohio’s “Fingers in the Jar”

Three of Mary Bach’s fingers, hacked off by her murderous husband in 1881, were displayed in a jar for more than a century in Bowling Green, Ohio.
A circle of white claymation guys around a black claymation guy

Racist Humor: Exploratory Readings

An introduction to the history and theory of racist humor and the social role it plays in Western societies.
Cape Town, South Africa

Cape Town, South Africa

Although the apartheid era continues to cast its shadow on Cape Town, many of its neighborhoods have been enjoying a renaissance as tourist destinations.
A couple in a Studebaker in Santa Barbara, CA, 1962 on a television screen

The Rise of the LA Suburb in 1960s TV

The shift from city centers to suburbs was reflected in post-World War II television programming.
The view south from Viking 2, one of two probes sent to investigate the surface of the planet Mars for the first time, September 6, 1976

We Might Have Accidentally Killed the Only Life We Ever Found on Mars Nearly 50 Years Ago

In one experiment, the Viking landers added water to Martian soil samples. That might have been a very bad idea.
Jesus in jail with Instruments of the Passion

Visiting Christ’s Prison Cell

After Christian crusaders captured Jerusalem, the Prison of Christ featured on pilgrims' itineraries. But was Christ actually ever imprisoned there?
Isokon Flats, c. 1978

The Spy Who Shared My Foyer

Luminaries from Agatha Christie to Walter Gropius gravitated to London’s “Lawn Road Flats.” So too did a far less conspicuous cohort: assets for the USSR.