War Camp Community Service. Newport News. American Library Association. c. 1919

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.
1935: Nazi leader Adolf Hitler speaks in front of microphones and gestures with his hands. Original Publication: From the newsreel 'The March of Time'. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

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.
Young Boy with Hat, 1990s

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.
Basel Mission catechist William Timothy Evans raised his two daughters in the mission community in Accra and Akropong after his Ga wife, Emma Evans (née Reindorf), died during childbirth in 1900.

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.
A photograph of bananas from the book Birds and Nature, 1900

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.
Annie Grayson; Or, Life in Washington

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.
Women cooking in a public kitchen, 19th century

Kitchenless Dreams

Escaping the drudgery of housekeeping via collective action became a feminist focus of utopian practitioners and theorists in the later nineteenth century.
Clemencia López

Clemencia López and the Philippine Struggle for Freedom

López’s gender and appearance helped her contribute to anti-imperial and suffrage movements in a way her male peers couldn’t.
Hutong in Beijing, China

China’s Historic Preservation Challenges

Beijing’s hutongs are disappearing quickly. Is there a way create safe housing, preserve historic buildings, and meet the city's financial needs?
Portrait of Nancy Clem

Money, Murder, and Mrs. Clem

Nancy Clem was a Gilded Age con artist whose swindles eventually turned deadly. Her crimes would test the era’s assumptions about class, gender, and criminality.