The Magic of a Crooked Sixpence
Coins were used for centuries in many ritual contexts, but the English silver sixpence was a particularly common charm—for several reasons.
Passing Narratives That Pre-Date Black Like Me
In 1905, Robert Gilbert Wells used a fictional character to explore the experience of being a Black man in America.
What Skulls Told Us
The pseudoscience phrenology swept the popular imagination, and its practitioners made a mint preying on prejudices, gullibility, and misinformation.
Dawn of the Bathroom
The bathroom didn’t become a thing until the nineteenth century, and most working-class US homes added plumbed-in amenities in piecemeal fashion over time.
Water Logs
Log drivers once steered loose timber on rivers across America before railroad expansion put such shepherds out of work.
Laura Kieler: A Life Exploited
Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen mined Kieler's life for the plot of his most famous play, The Doll's House.
Pro-Sex Feminists of the 1920s
In the early decades of the twentieth century, political and social activists saw separating sex from marriage and reproduction as an issue of freedom.
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.
The Rise of the Domestic Husband
In the late 1800s, advice writers targeting white, middle-class Americans began encouraging men to become more engaged in the emotional lives of their households.