Should Readers Trust “Inaccuracy” in Memoirs about Genocide?
To what extent do errors undermine life writing? The question is an urgent one when that writing is testimony to the genocidal actions of the Khmer Rouge.
Urban Planning, Then and Now
Humans have been designing cities for millennia. California Forever is just the newest entry in a long list of planned communities around the world.
Peshtigo: The Nation’s Deadliest Fire
On the same night as Chicago’s Great Fire of 1871, some 2,400 square miles of Wisconsin and Michigan burned in a firestorm that took more than 1,000 lives.
The End of Asian Exclusion, the Beginning of Caribbean Exclusion
The 1952 McCarran-Walter Act allowed first-generation Japanese American immigrants to become US citizens while keeping African Caribbean immigrants out.
Building Community and Urban Tree Canopy
Long before the COVID-19 pandemic, Black communities and other reformers in New York City recognized the ameliorative social effects of greening urban spaces.
Genocide in California
The extermination campaigns against the Yuki people, sparked by the California Gold Rush and statehood, weren’t termed genocide until the mid 1970s.
Tuskegee University’s Audio Collections
The archives of the historically Black Tuskegee University recently released recordings from 1957 to 1971, with a number by powerful civil rights leaders.
How Portuguese Slave Traders Changed Ethiopia and Congo
Portuguese trading of enslaved Africans affected two major African powers in very different ways.
Water Logs
Log drivers once steered loose timber on rivers across America before railroad expansion put such shepherds out of work.
Ali: Alfred Russel Wallace’s Right-Hand Gun
Wallace wouldn't have become a famous naturalist without help from colonial networks and hundreds of locals, including his indefatigable Sarawak servant, Ali.