“Lynch Law in America”: Annotated
Ida B. Wells-Barnett, whose January 1900 essay exposed the racist reasons given by mobs for their crimes, argued that lynch law was an American shame.
An Epic Face-Lift: Moving Abu Simbel Out of the Nile
Some 25,000 workers cut Abu Simbel’s statues and temples into pieces, hoisted them into the air, and reassembled them on an artificial hill 200 meters away.
Creating an Ottoman Political Culture
As the Ottoman Empire became a world power in the fifteenth century, it also became a center of culture, producing original political literature and philosophy.
Hard Bites and Slow Songs
How beak size affects the singing and evolution of songbirds.
The Sociopolitical Impact of A Passage to India
E. M. Forster’s novel captured not only the tensions between colonizers and colonized but also the fraught internal politics that shaped India’s fight for independence.
An Age of Fantasy Politics
Tropes from science fiction and fantasy have become fodder for political rhetoric and action on all sides in the twenty-first century.
Nationalism Before It Was in the News
Nationalist rhetoric has surged to the center of US politics, but what do Americans actually mean when they say “nationalism” in the twenty-first century?
Hoe History: Complex and Knotted
The plantation hoe, a simple, ubiquitous, and historically ignored farming tool, was specific to the Atlantic colonial project, shows historian Chris Evans.
“Simple, Wholesome Food” for a New American Nation
In the aftermath of the Revolutionary War, Americans faced understandable anxiety about what their society would look like—and what they should eat.
A Presidents’ Day Roundup
Who—or what—do Americans celebrate on the third Monday of February?