The "world's littlest skyscraper" in Wichita Falls, Texas, 2015

Boom, Bust, and the “World’s Littlest Skyscraper”

The discovery of oil near Wichita Falls in 1911 not only brought money to the Texas town, it brought a swindler who promised the sky(scraper).
American athlete Nancy Voorhees clears the bar as she trains for the high jump event ahead of the 1922 Women's World Games, during a training session at Weequanic Park in Newark, New Jersey, 1922

Sport in America: A Reading List

Covering the colonial era to the present, this annotated bibliography demonstrates the topical and methodological diversity of sport studies in the United States.
A cattle roundup in Nevada, 1973, with a photoshopped UFO in the sky

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.
Ilex paraguariensis

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.
Fetching water from a spigot which services many people who live in the huge slum area known as "El Fangitto" in San Juan, Puerto Rico

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.
Cannabis sativa, 1828

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.
Vintage image of a baseball game in the late 19th century.

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.
WPA bookmobile

How Reading Got Farm Women Through the Depression

They worked over sixty hours a week but were also insatiable readers.
950's illustration of the exterior of a two story suburban home

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.