Who Gets to Make Commencement Speeches (and Why)?
Why are battles over just who gets the honor of toasting new graduates—and what they say—always so heated?
Treadmills Were Meant to Be Atonement Machines
America’s favorite piece of workout equipment was developed as a device for forced labor in British prisons. It was banned as cruel and inhumane by 1900.
The Race to Save the Axolotl
When an axolotl loses a limb, it regrows, and nary a scar remains. But this incredible creature is on the brink of extinction.
Michelle Dean: A Sharp Look at Criticism by Women
Dean on the obstacles women face in being taken seriously as intellectuals, feminist infighting, and the importance of being an outsider.
George Washington’s “Yelp Reviews”
Staying at inns allowed Washington to examine the state of the infrastructure for traveling in the new federal Republic. The only problem was, he hated it.
The Restoration’s Filthiest Poet (and Why We Need Him)
Creature of the court, royalist and fop, dandy and dilettante, John Wilmot, Second Earl of Rochester, knew how to scandalize with verse.
What, Prithee, Is a Poetess?
The loss and recovery of a poetic genre shows how the canon of literary history treats women writers the moment they start to gain attention and approval.
The New Sameness of Leslie Jamison’s Addiction Memoir
Leslie Jamison's The Recovering is self-aware about being the same old story, recalling the redemption narratives of Rousseau and St. Augustine.
Charles Knowlton, the Father of American Birth Control
Decades after Charles Knowlton died, his book would be credited with the reversal of population growth in England and the popularization of contraception in the United States.