Why Bias Helps News Channels—and Maybe Viewers Too
MSNBC recently signaled that it was moving away from the liberal-leaning shows it’s become known for and toward more straight news reporting. Writing in The Atlantic, Megan Garber suggests that...
Meat and Potatoes: The Reminiscences of Alonzo Davis
In April 1863, the men of the 4th California infantry were hungry. They were posted at Drum Barracks outside of Los Angeles, and were preparing to march to Arizona to...
Waking the Spirits: The Diaries of John A. Clark
The archival box containing John Clark’s leather-bound diaries is heavy; this is because it contains twenty-five leather-bound journals, filled with meticulous entries and some intermittent maps detailing Clark’s daily life...
Searching for Emmett Mills
It was springtime, in 1920. Three men disembarked from a train in a high desert town and loaded their luggage into a chauffeured car. The men swayed, bumped, and jostled...
Making Claims
As I traveled through the Southwest over the past few months, I met a lot of people. Some academics and archivists and National Park Service rangers, but also waiters, bartenders,...
A Complicated Man: John Baylor’s Letters to His Family
In February 1854 John Robert Baylor wrote a letter to his wife Emmy from Austin, where he was serving in the Texas state legislature. He wrote to tell her that...
Reading the Landscape
For the past two months, I have been on a researching road trip through the West and Southwest—Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and now Texas. As readers of this column know,...
Visualizing History
What can visual images tell us about the past? For most historians (who are not art historians), the answer to this question is, “not much.” They use images only as...
Finding Your Place in Letters
In nineteenth-century America, letter writing was the only way that people separated by long distances could communicate with one another. High rates of literacy and mobility, along with a growing...
Finding Your Place by Looking at Maps
How do you know where you are? Sometimes you know by experience—you have been to this neighborhood before, walked along or driven these streets. Your geographic knowledge and memory grows...