The 1970s Cow Mutilation Mystery
When ranchers began reporting incidents of mutilated cattle, the ensuing panic fed both conspiracy theories and a growing cynicism about the government.
Plant of the Month: Yerba Mate
The biological and cultural profile of mate has affected its global expansion, unlike other plants native to the Americas, such as cacao and maize.
Wanting to Believe In Rainmakers
A form of entertainment and outgrowth of desperation, self-styled rainmakers allowed the powerless people of the Great Plains to seemingly take action.
The New Deal Comes To Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico was hit hard by the Great Depression. New Deal relief programs were often democratic and locally controlled.
Growing Cannabis to Fight Exploitation
In the early years of cannabis prohibition, agricultural workers in the western United States used the plant to treat pain and supplement family incomes.
Baseball History and Rural America
Baseball's creation myth is bunk, and historians have shown how important cities were to the game's development. But it was still a rural passion.
How Reading Got Farm Women Through the Depression
They worked over sixty hours a week but were also insatiable readers.
The Latent Racism of the Better Homes in America Program
How Better Homes in America—a collaboration between Herbert Hoover and the editor of a conservative women’s magazine—promoted idealized whiteness.
Who Was Elsie, besides the World’s Most Famous Cow?
In the Great Depression, Borden sought a new spokescow to help preserve its traditional agrarian image.
The End of the Country Road
When “good roads” first became a political issue, rural people were decidedly not the ones advocating for them.