A Million Americans Once Voted for an Incarcerated Socialist
Eugene Debs campaigned for both president and prison reform from a federal penitentiary. His critiques of the prison system still resonate.
Whiskey, Women, and Work
Prohibition—and its newly created underground economy—changed the way women lived, worked, and socialized.
JFK’s Assassination and “Doing Your Own Research”
Revelations about secret government programs after Kennedy’s assassination increased the power of conspiracy theories and the fervor of those who set out to expose them.
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.
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.
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.
Kitchenless Dreams
Escaping the drudgery of housekeeping via collective action became a feminist focus of utopian practitioners and theorists in the later nineteenth century.
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.
The Irrigationist
Canadian-born George Chaffey was instrumental in bringing irrigation and the consequent development of the “agriburb” to California…and Australia…and Israel.
Lyndon B. Johnson’s Decision Speech: Annotated
United States President Lyndon B. Johnson’s televised announcement that he would not run for re-election shocked a nation divided by the Vietnam War.