Brigadier General Smedley Butler, 1927.

Genesis of the Modern American Right

During the Great Depression, financial elites translated European fascism into an American form that joined high capital with lower middle-class populism.
No. 27 - Kakegawa: Akibayama Fork, from the series The Tôkaidô Road - The Fifty-three Stations, also known as the Reisho Tôkaidô, between 1847 and 1852

How a Rice Economy Toppled the Shogun

The co-existence of economies—one based on rice, the other on money—pushed the Tokugawa government toward financial misery and failure.
A cover for The Power of Non-violence by Richard Gregg

Richard Gregg: An American Pioneer of Nonviolence Remembered 

Gregg was one of the first translators of Gandhi’s methods of nonviolent resistance for the West.
Gift for the grangers

The Gift of the Grange

Originally a secret society, the National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry today is an important health and education resource in rural communities.
Aerial shot of Brooklyn, New York city on an overcast day in summer, taken from over the Bedford-Stuvesant neighborhood.

Where Are the Trees?

Why some neighborhoods get all the shade, and how can we make sure that changes.
Muhammad Ali and George Foreman boxing in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo

Remembering the Rumble in the Jungle

The 1974 Rumble in the Jungle was freighted with symbolism regarding American racial politics and the pan-African struggle in the context of the Cold War.
The partially destroyed National and University Library of Bosnia, 1992

Whence Warchitecture

The targeted destruction of the built environment during the Bosnian War led to the emergence of a new term in the discourse of urbicide: warchitecture.
An image tiled "A strange gathering of Anabaptists and Quakers" depicting a naked woman and Anabaptists and Quakers before a pulpit

The Naked Quakers

Today, the international feminist group FEMEN uses nudity as part of its protests. But appearing naked in public was also a tactic used by early dissenters.
A high-angle view of a protest march with protesters carrying banners and placards reading 'Lynching is a Social Blot, Wipe it Out!', 'Free the Scottsboro Boys', 'Free Angelo Herndon', and 'Lynching is Un-American, Stop! Lynching' with some of the protestors carrying individual letters that spell out 'Stop! Lynching', United States, circa 1934.

The Long Civil Rights Movement

The “master narrative” of civil rights in the United States obscures the history of a more radical civil rights movement that stretches to the 1930s.
Three men on deck of the H.M.S. Challenger studying Medusae jellyfish

HMS Challenger and the History of Science at Sea

Sailing ships were once used as scientific instruments themselves, but in the 1800s, ships like the Challenger were transformed into floating laboratories.