Making Malt Liquor at Monticello
Thomas Jefferson thought whiskey was harmful to the country. Together with enslaved brewer Peter Hemings, he experimented with making less potent drinks.
A Short History of Hairdryers
The beauty parlor became a place of sociability for women in the twentieth century, partly aided by modern technology of hair drying.
Understanding Capitalism Through Cotton
Looking at the development of cotton as a global commodity, explains historian Sven Beckert, helps us understand how capitalism emerged.
A Boatload of Knowledge for New Harmony
Leaders of the Philadelphia Academy of Sciences voyaged down the Ohio River in 1825–1826, taking academic education on a journey in search of utopia.
The Cross-Dressing Superstar of the Belle Époque
Mathilde de Morny's commitment to a masculine aesthetic and a non-traditional lifestyle in nineteenth-century France challenged the boundaries of gender identity.
Consuming Hawai‘i’s Golden People
With statehood in 1959 came “Aloha Spirit” tourism, turning Hawai‘i’s ethnic diversity into a commodity that benefited both business and US foreign policy.
Race, Prison, and the Thirteenth Amendment
Critiques of the Thirteenth Amendment have roots in a long history of activists who understood the imprisonment of Black people as a type of slavery.
Poison and Magic in Caribbean Uprisings
Witchcraft and poisoning were closely connected for both West Africans and the Europeans who enslaved them in the eighteenth-century Caribbean.
How the Black Press Helped Integrate Baseball
In the 1930s and ’40s, Black newspapers like the Pittsburgh Courier used their platform to help break the sport’s color line.