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Black and white headshot of author Livia Gershon

Livia Gershon

Livia Gershon is a freelance writer in Nashua, New Hampshire. Her writing has appeared in publications including Salon, Aeon Magazine and the Good Men Project. Contact her on Twitter @liviagershon.

From the cover of Life Magazine, August 1925

A Cigarette-Eye View of US History

The big story for cigarettes in the twentieth century was their journey from popularity to pariah.
A computer screen with an old Wikipedia logo

Whatever Happened to the Open Internet?

There may be a way out of corporate control of the internet, but it probably starts with money.
A young Native American boy learns the Eagle Dance in Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona, 1952

Understanding the Indian Child Welfare Act

The ICWA wasn’t implemented perfectly, but it reversed a centuries-old pattern of removing Native children from their families and their tribes.
Lodgers in a Crowded Bayard Street Tenement. Photo by Jacob Riis

When Lodgers Were “Evil”

A wave of immigration from eastern and southern Europe transformed urban landscapes, creating crowded tenements that stoked humanitarian concerns.
Seven-year-old Luz Clarisa Pacco shows huatia, potatoes cooked in a traditional Andean way in a whole on the ground on June 21, 2022 in Pisac, Peru.

Respecting the Potato

Cuzco’s Potato Park conserves biodiversity and strengthens food sovereignty, all while emphasizing respect for this important and charismatic crop.
Photograph: Anti-gay marriage protestors pray outside the Massachusetts State House March 11, 2004 in Boston, Massachusetts. 

Source: Michael Springer/Getty

What is Fundamentalism?

Fundamentalism, which shifts the balance between authority structures and the indescribable divine, emerged after medieval society gave way to the modern.
The Mirabal sisters

Remembering the Mirabal Sisters

International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women honors three sisters who were murdered by the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic.
Woman Drinking Coffee by Léon Étienne Tournes, part of the collection of the Gothenburg Museum of Art

The Swedish-American Coffee Tradition

For many Swedish immigrants to the United States, coffee was a key to hospitality and a way to signal prosperity.
The interior of a Chinese pharmacy in Los Angeles, 1907

The Allure of Chinese Medicine 

Capitalizing on stereotypes earned Chinese-American practitioners patients, but it also helped keep them confined to the margins of American society.
Page 22 of the Codex Borgia depicting naguals, shapeshifting creatures

The Teyollohcuani: Cosmopolitan Vampire Witch

When different cultures meet, their languages, foods, and songs mix and change—and so do their monsters.
Art class at the Portland, OR YMCA, 1899

Scandal at the YMCA

Troubles grew at the Portland institution when one of its older residents attempted to poison himself after being questioned by police about same-sex relations.
The Liberty Tree in Boston, where the Committee of Correspondence often gathered. It was chopped down by the Loyalists in 1775.

The Letter That Helped Start a Revolution

The Town of Boston’s invention of the standing committee 250 years ago provided a means for building consensus during America’s nascent independence movement.
Film poster for White Zombie, 1932

Colonialism Birthed the Zombie Movie

The first feature-length zombie movie emerged from Haitians’ longstanding association of the living dead with slavery and exploited labor.
Jinn gathering for combat in Shah Namah, the Persian Epic of the Kings

Life with a Jinni

A jinni in the home can help a Muslim explore religious tenets, but it may also interfere with the direct relationship between human and god.
An image made by the FDA about nutritional labeling, 1990

Where Do Nutrition Labels Come From?

We all ponder them when standing in the cereal aisle of the grocery store, but why do we even have nutrition labels on our foods?
U.S. soldiers reading books in a YMCA library

Why Learn to Read?

The value placed on literacy has changed over time, shifting from a nineteenth-century moral imperative to a twentieth-century production necessity.
An advertisement by the Partnership for a Drug Free America

The Story Behind “This is Your Brain on Drugs”

How did the campaign behind the Partnership for a Drug Free America’s iconic commercials develop, and why were its products so memorable?
A banquet to HH Ranjit Nawanagar in India, 1907

Gender, Meat-Eating, and British Colonialism

As the power of the East India Company grew, British writers embraced the idea that the (alleged) passiveness of Indians was due in part to vegetarianism.
An illustration for a 1957 Kotex magazine advertisement

The Feminine Art of Bow Hunting

Although hunting is often styled as a sport of men, American magazines marketed bow hunting to women in an attempt to legitimize and civilize the sport.
Igbo women

Women Leaders in Africa: The Case of the Igbo

In the precolonial Igbo states of West Africa, power was often wielded by male chiefs or elders, but women had their own forms of authority as well. 

A Natural History of Dragons

Dragons began life as snakes, but natural historians gradually began describing them in more fantastical ways.
Group of strawberry pickers in a strawberry field in Bell, California, ca.1910

Internationalism and Racism in the Labor Movement

A commitment to internationalism helped build multi-ethnic campaigns within the more radical and anti-authoritarian side of the US labor movement.
Grizzly Adams

The True Story of Grizzly Adams

In order to invent a legendary hero of the Wild West, John Adams shook himself free from his life as shoemaker in Massachusetts.
Three women in Salvation Army uniforms

The Fashion of the Salvation Army

Regulated dress promoted unity with the organization and distanced members, especially women, from both secular life and conventional Protestantism.
A View of the Pearl-Fishery, created for George Henry Millar's The new and universal System of Geography, 1782

African Swimmers in American Waters

Although most enslaved people worked in the fields, captive workers with strong swimming and diving skills were also exploited by plantation owners.