Guns in America: Foundations and Key Concepts
This non-exhaustive list of readings on the role of guns in US history and society introduces the field as a subject of scholarly inquiry.
QAnon as Neo-Noir
The popular conspiracy theory has intriguing parallels with classic noir by Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett.
The Legacy of Racial Hatred in the January 6 Insurrection
The U.S.’s politics of racial hatred are sustained by a culture of making political compromises when bold action is required.
Plant of the Month: Venus Flytrap
The carnivorous plant, native to the Carolinas, has beguiled botanists and members of the public alike since the eighteenth century.
How Aztecs Reacted to Colonial Epidemics
Colonial exploitation made the indigenous Aztec people disproportionately vulnerable to epidemics. Indigenous accounts show their perspective.
Morgan Jerkins: Exploring the Multitudes within American Blackness
In her new book, Wandering in Strange Lands, Morgan Jerkins takes a deeply personal look at the effects of the Great Migration.
European Colonization and Epidemics Among Native Peoples
What you learned about the diseases that decimated Native communities is probably wrong.
Bolívar in Haiti
Simón Bolívar was a man of contradiction. He was willing to set in motion the gradual abolition of slavery, but that would be as far as he would go.
![Travels through Virginia. [From Theodor de Bry's 'America', Vol. I, 1590, after a drawing of John White].](https://daily.jstor.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/the_construction_of_america_in_the_eyes_of_the_english_1050x700-600x400.jpg)
The Construction of America, in the Eyes of the English
In Theodor de Bry’s illustrations for Thomas Harriot’s Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia, the Algonquin are made to look like the Irish. Surprise.
The Lumpy Pearls That Enchanted the Medicis
There’s a specific term for these irregular pearls: “baroque,” from the Portuguese barroco.