A Million Americans Once Voted for an Incarcerated Socialist
Eugene Debs campaigned for both president and prison reform from a federal penitentiary. His critiques of the prison system still resonate.
Whiskey, Women, and Work
Prohibition—and its newly created underground economy—changed the way women lived, worked, and socialized.
JFK’s Assassination and “Doing Your Own Research”
Revelations about secret government programs after Kennedy’s assassination increased the power of conspiracy theories and the fervor of those who set out to expose them.
Uncle Sam Wants You to Donate Books!
During World War I, the American Library Association built libraries on military training camps in a project that championed patriotism, literacy, and self-improvement.
A Cancelation in 1934
A writer for the Baltimore Sun compared Hitler to the sixteenth-century Catholic Saint Ignatius. Archbishop Curley had something to say about that.
Divorce, Gen-X Style
By clinging to a one-dimensional view of selfish parents and ignored kids, GenXers missed the chance to empathize with their (heading-for-a-divorce) parents.
Exposing the Sexual Hypocrisy of European Colonists
In the early twentieth century, white colonizers’ exploitation of women in West Africa’s Gold Coast stoked anti-colonial politics.
Fruit Geopeelitics: America’s Banana Republics
The one-way movement of wealth in the banana trade contributed to the political and economic conditions that challenged its hegemony after World War II.
Nancy Lasselle’s Washington Novels
Lasselle’s 1850s novels were the first to examine the entanglements of society and politics—including lobbying—in Washington, DC.
Kitchenless Dreams
Escaping the drudgery of housekeeping via collective action became a feminist focus of utopian practitioners and theorists in the later nineteenth century.