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Black and white headshot of author Matthew Wills

Matthew Wills

Matthew Wills has advanced degrees in library science and film studies and is lapsed in both fields. He has published in Poetry, Huffington Post, and Nature Conservancy Magazine, among other places, and blogs regularly about urban natural history at matthewwills.com.

City Federation of Colored Women's Clubs of Jacksonville, State Meeting, Palatka, Florida

Women’s Clubs and the “Lost Cause”

Women's clubs were popular after the Civil War among white and Black women. But white clubwomen used their influence to ingrain racist curriculum in schools.
A 19th century advertisement for fish glue

Isinglass; or, The Many Miracles of Fish Glue

Isinglass comes from the swim bladders of certain kinds of fish and can be found in everything from beer recipes to illuminated manuscripts. Ew? No way.
A pile of pots, pans, and kitchen utensils sits in front of a poster urging people to donate aluminum kitchen ware to help the US Air Force

The Environmental Costs of War

Using aluminum as a case study, a geographer shows how wartime "commodity chains" can devastate the Earth.
The Beatles performing in 1961

The Beatles Got Started in Hamburg. There’s a Reason for That.

The Beatles first played Hamburg's pleasure zone in 1960, in a former strip club near the infamous Reeperbahn.
A photo of Emmett Till is included on the plaque that marks his gravesite at Burr Oak Cemetery in Aslip, Illinois.

How Local Newspapers Helped Emmett Till’s Murderers Go Free

Emmett Till was a boy of fourteen when he was lynched in Mississippi. The press would influence public opinion, and the outcome of the trial.
The Castle Bravo hydrogen bomb blast at Bikini Atoll on March 1, 1954

How the H-Bomb Led to a Reckoning in Japan

For years, the trauma of the atomic bomb was hardly talked about in Japan. The H-bomb test at Bikini Atoll changed that.
Illustration: An illustration from The Experiences of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective

Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/britishlibrary/11305222256

Meet Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective

Fictional detectives usually reflect conservative values. But the first "lady detective" story written by a woman broke boundaries.
Lovers of the Sun by Henry Scott Tuke

The Market Will Bare It: Transnational Nude Tourism

As Europeans recovered from the devastation of World War II, nude beaches appeared in France.
Teenagers in a Siberian village near Lake Baikal

The New Siberians

As heat waves induced by climate change roil the Arctic Circle, Siberians are articulating a distinct identity.
Supper at Delmonico's, New York 1898

The First American Restaurants’ Culinary Concoctions

A study of historical fine-dining menus yields surprises. Like six preparations of frog, and delicious lamb testicles.
Two boys share candy on a New York street, circa 1925

How Residential Segregation Looked in the South

A longstanding idea about southern segregation is that it was more "intimate" than its northern counterpart. What's the truth?
President Lyndon Baines Johnson with some members of the Kerner Commission in the Cabinet Room of the White House, Washington, D.C., 1967

The Kerner Commission Report on White Racism, 50 Years On

In 1968, the Kerner Commission “explicitly identified white racism as the principal cause of the civil disorder evidenced across hundreds of U.S. cities."
Frances Wright, 1881

Nashoba: Not So Interracial, Not So Utopian

In the 1820s, Frances Wright established a community whose major project was the emancipation of enslaved people. Why did it crash and burn?
Grand procession of Wide-Awakes in New York, October 3, 1860

Abolitionist “Wide Awakes” Were Woke Before “Woke”

“Now the old men are folding their arms and going to sleep,” said William H. Seward while campaigning for Lincoln, “and the young men are Wide Awake.”
Bayard Rustin, 1965

Who Was Bayard Rustin?

And why is he left out of the history of the civil rights movement?
Statue of The South Bank Lion in London with Big Ben in the background

Fake Stone and the Georgian Ladies Who Made It

Coade stone was all the rage in late eighteenth-century architecture, and a mother-and-daughter team was behind it all.
Grapes on a vine

The Great Grape Graft That Saved the Wine Industry

Grape varieties from North America seemed harmless to French winemakers. But destructive bugs were imported with the plants.
South African police beating Black women with clubs after they raided and set a beer hall on fire in protest against apartheid, Durban, South Africa, 1959

The South African Experience with Changing the Police from Within

In states transitioning from authoritarianism to democracy, resistance to police abuses can make or break the larger democratic project, explains one social scientist.
A man nursing a sick person, circa 1850

Blaming People for Getting Sick Has a Long History

Four major theories of disease transmission dominated scientific discourse in the nineteenth century. As one scholar writes, all were political.
Members of the United Kingdom branch of the Gay Liberation Front carry placards during a street protest along Essex Street in London on 12th February 1971.

From Gay Liberation to Marriage Equality

One scholar explains how the LGBT movement became focused on advancing the rights of a narrow set of people at the expense of its once-radical vision.
Rear View Of Man Wearing Yellow Raincoat In Forest During Rain

Resilience: The Basics of a Concept

From the ecological to the social, “resilience” is a buzzword for our crisis-ridden age. But what is resilience exactly, and where did the idea emerge from?
An illustration of Charivari by Jean-Jacques Grandville, 1831

Ye Olde Morality-Enforcement Brigades

The charivari (or shivaree) was a ritual in which people on the lower rungs of a community called out neighbors who violated social and sexual norms.
Illustration of a woman walking with a book

The Library That Walked Across Belgium

What two scholar-artists learned from taking ninety books on a very, very long walk.
Sake Deen Mahomed by T. M. Baynes

Dean Mahomet: Travel Writer, Border Crosser

The author of what is considered the first English-language book by an Indian writer was neither a rebel nor an accommodationist.
Tim Robinson

Deep Mapping with Tim Robinson

By walking his way around an island off the coast of Ireland, the late artist broke with cartography's origins in marking ownership and conquest.