Almanacs from the Civil War era reveal how two sides of an embattled nation used data from the natural world to legitimize their claims to statehood.

The source of quinine, cinchona tells a story about the value placed on parts of plants and how that value can be extracted and distorted in support of empire.

A Percival Everett fan weighs in on the novelist’s approach to racial satire and considers the translation of Erasure to the big screen in American Fiction.

Drawing a clock has become a standard test of cognitive impairment, but there’s no consensus on who should do it or how.

What roiled the mind of Nebraska poet John Neihardt with whom Black Elk, the iconic Lakota holy man, shared his story?

Low Country artists of the late Renaissance and Early Baroque eras captured the happiness and hardships of snowy winters—an ever rarer phenomenon now.

Recruited to the war effort thanks to their deft research skills and technological know-how, librarians used microforms to gather and share intelligence with Allied forces.

Contrary to popular misconceptions, Europeans in the Middle Ages took pains to keep themselves clean.

William Carlos Williams's hybrid work of poetry and prose both upended narrative conventions and delighted in the wondrous, unifying force of imagination.

"Except as punishment for a crime," reads the constitutional exception to abolition. In prison plantations across the United States, slavery thrives.