Ch’arki: The First Jerky
Ch'arki is made in the high-altitude Andes by alternately drying the meat in the hot sun and freezing it during the cold nights.
What the Reconstruction Meant for Women
Southern legal codes included parallel language pairing “master and slave” and “husband and wife.”
The Bizarre Social History of Beds
For centuries, people thought nothing of crowding family members or friends into the same bed.
Thanksgiving Has Been Reinvented Many Times
From colonial times to the nineteenth century, Thanksgiving was very different from the holiday we know now.
Why MLK Believed Jazz Was the Perfect Soundtrack for Civil Rights
Jazz, King declared, was the ability to take the “hardest realities of life and put them into music, only to come out with some new hope or sense of triumph.”
Oscar Wilde’s Pamphlet: “Children in Prison and Other Cruelties of Prison Life”
Wilde's description is heart-wrenching, but that doesn't hold him back from the usual wit and drama that characterize his writing.
The Columbian Exchange Should Be Called The Columbian Extraction
Europeans were eager to absorb the starches and flavors pioneered by the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere.
Why the Dakota Only Traded among People with Kinship Bonds
“Trapping was not a ‘business for profit’ among the Dakota but primarily a social exchange,” one scholar writes.
When Botany Was for Ladies
In nineteenth century America, young women took to studying botany—a conjoining of interest, social acceptance, and readily available schooling.
How the Ban on Medical Advertising Hurt Women Doctors
Intended to protect consumers from unscrupulous quackery, a nineteenth-century ban on medical advertising proved to be a double-edged sword.