A Feminist Reading of The Long Winter
In The Long Winter, often praised as Laura Ingalls Wilder’s greatest novel, the villain may be not the snow, but oppressive gender roles.
How Victorians’ Fear of Starvation Created Our Christmas Lore
One scholar sees more in the Christmas food of authors like Charles Dickens—English national identity and class.
What Amateur Cookbooks Reveal About History
Remember those spiral-bound cookbooks from your church group or your mom’s favorite charity? Those amateur recipe collections are history books, too.
Early America’s Troubled Relationship With Monkeys
The real and supposed resemblances between humans and non-human primates shaped American conversations about race and society.
How Native Americans Taught Both Assimilation and Resistance at Indian Schools
In the nineteenth century, many Native American children attended “Indian schools” designed to blot out Native cultures in favor of Anglo assimilation.
Winston Churchill’s Love-Hungry Childhood
Winston Churchill started life as a love-starved child whose lonely childhood set the stage for his almost fanatical need for influence and power.
The Grumpiness of Little Women
By focusing in on the characters’ emotions, a scholar discovers something more than good little women. She finds surprisingly angry ones.
Punch vs. Tea in the 18th Century
In the 18th century, whether a person drank punch or tea revealed a lot about gender, stereotypes, sociability, and domesticity.
The Truth About Sherlock Holmes: He’s Actually Henry David Thoreau
A tongue in cheek comparison between the British fictional sleuth and the American Transcendentalist author, just because.
The Delicious Democratic Symbolism of…Doughnuts?
Doughnuts became popular during World War I, when Salvation Army volunteers—most of them women—made and served the soldiers million of doughnuts.