The Bayonet: What’s the Point?
According to one scholar, the military sees training in this obsolete weapon as helpful on the modern battlefield.
Yaks in Tibet
As China tried to expand into Tibet in the late 1930s, it looked to the yak as a way to "modernize" Tibetan culture.
Sophia Thoreau to the Rescue!
Who made sure Henry David Thoreau's works came out after his death? His sister.
Solar Housing Is Actually Kind of Retro!
The domestic fuel scarcity of World War II led to innovation in home heating—especially passive solar technology.
How Leonard Woolf Critiqued Bloomsbury from Within
A literary scholar argues that Leonard Woolf has been unfairly neglected—perhaps because his anti-imperialism implicated his friends.
The Benin Bronzes and the Cultural History of Museums
What an 1897 exhibition at the British Museum can tell us about how African artworks were perceived in an era of imperialism.
Sergei Eisenstein and the Haitian Revolution
Why was the legendary Soviet filmmaker rebuffed in his vision of putting history's most consequential slave revolt on screen?
How a Forbidden Russian Epic Finally Got Published
Soviet dissident Vasily Grossman's Life and Fate was "arrested" by the KGB in 1961. Here's how it finally saw the light of day.
When the Push Button Was New, People Were Freaked
The mundane interface between human and machine caused social anxiety in the late nineteenth century.
Can Thucydides Teach Us Why We Go to War?
A contemporary scholar uses the ancient Greek historian to explain the 1968 Pueblo Crisis in North Korea.