The Age of the Bed Changed the Way We Sleep
One historian reconstructs what nighttime was like in early modern Europe, and how the darkness affected people's sleep patterns.
What Hippie Commune Cookbooks Reveal About Communal Living
The cookbooks of the communes of the 1960s and 1970s share the recipes and politics of the era, and still speak to us today about what we eat and why.
The Joy of Fasting
Fasting was once a religious endeavor. The idea that skipping meals could lead to improved health emerged around the turn of the twentieth century.
Frontier America in a Collection of Tin Cans
For Jim Rock, tin cans were as important as shards of ancient pottery. Each can told a story of nineteenth and twentieth century life in America.
The War on White Bread
In 1890, women baked more than 80 percent of the nation’s bread at home, and it was brown, non-standardized stuff. When did it become white?
What Rum and Cokes Have to do With War
What could be more American than a sugary soda mixed with a liquor made from sugar? The origins of rum and Coke is more problematic than you might expect.
The Cookbook That Brought Chinese Food to American Kitchens
The groundbreaking 1945 cookbook, How to Cook and Eat in Chinese, that introduced Chinese cooking to white American cooks.
When Coffee Went Bananas
Abel French Spawn was not alone in marketing caffeine-free coffee substitutes like banana coffee to Mormons.
The Meaning of a Mustache
To shave or not to shave? At the start of the twentieth century, a trend away from facial hair reflected dramatic social and economic shifts.
The Caves in Which Moonshine Was Made
White County, TN, averaged more than a million and a half gallons of moonshine a year at late as the 1950s.