Women and men in the California Gold Rush, 1850

Yes, Women Participated in the Gold Rush

“Conventional wisdom tells us that the gold rush was a male undertaking,” writes the historian Glenda Riley. But women were there, too.
Empress Joséphine holding a Jacquemus Mini Le Chiquito handbag

Our Best Stories of 2019

Tweety bird linguistics, tiny purses, Beowulf's monsters, and the evolution of beauty.
Prince Andrew

Who Survives a Political Scandal?

For a public figure, a scandal is a predictable hazard of the trade. What's less predictable, however, is who survives one.
Members of the Oneida Community

The Oneida Community Moves to the OC

The Oneida Community's Christian form of collectivism was transported to California in the 1880s, when the original Oneida Community fell apart.
An unknown woman from the city of Grodno, circa 1900

Tsarist Russia’s Feminist Intelligentsia

In the context of Russia's patriarchal autocracy, its intelligentsia was surprisingly feminist, as Vera Podorovskaya's life illustrates.
Buster Keaton, Margaret Leahy and Wallace Beery in a scene from The Three Ages, 1923

The Truth about “Caveman Courtship”

Cartoon stories about early humans bear a striking resemblance to many popular uses of evolutionary psychology today.
Three reindeer running through snow

The Reindeer Games

In 1907, the U.S. Reindeer Service was organized as part of an effort to domesticate the animals...and Inupiat Eskimos.
Larry Lessig

Lawrence Lessig: How to Repair Our Democracy

Law professor and one-time presidential hopeful Lawrence Lessig on campaign finance, gerrymandering, and the electoral college.
Travels through Virginia. [From Theodor de Bry's 'America', Vol. I, 1590, after a drawing of John White].

The Construction of America, in the Eyes of the English

In Theodor de Bry’s illustrations for Thomas Harriot’s Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia, the Algonquin are made to look like the Irish. Surprise.
Vintage Portrait of two Babies in an Old Fashioned Antique Baby Carriage Buggy

This Isn’t the First Baby Bust

And it's unlikely to be the last. One scholar looks at the factors that contributed to the increase in childlessness at the turn of the twentieth century.