Excerpts

Curated stories from around the web.
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Corn in a basket.
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Translating Corn

To most of the world, “corn” is “maize,” a word that comes from the Taíno mahizwas. Not for British colonists in North America, though.
U.S. Capitol building

Searching for the Perfect Republic

On the 14th amendment – and if it might stop Trump.
Digitally altered portrait of a man in a suit with his face pixelated, framed by computer windows.

What the Doomsayers Get Wrong About Deepfakes

Experts have warned that utterly realistic A.I.-generated videos might wreak havoc through deception. What’s happened is troubling in a different way.
A stylized drawing of Bill Erquitt.

The Death of a Relic Hunter

Bill Erquitt was an unforgettable character among Georgia’s many Civil War enthusiasts. After he died, his secrets came to light.
Women with blankets and fans, in a scene from Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon.”

The Missing Politics of Scorsese’s ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’

Blaming corrupt individuals rather than federal Indian policy for the violence and exploitation perpetrated against the Osage Nation misses the mark.
Lily Gladstone and Martin Scorsese on the set of "Killers of the Flower Moon."

How Publicity of Killers of the Flower Moon Recalls Rosebud Yellow Robe’s 1950 Hollywood Tour

On the performance of authenticity and the native stories left to tell.
The shrouded bodies of people killed in the Israeli bombardment of Gaza.

“Genocide” Is the Wrong Word

We reach for the term when we want to condemn the worst crimes, but the UN’s Genocide Convention excuses more perpetrators of mass murder than it condemns.
Wikimedia Foundation servers.

Dead Links

Maintaining the internet data of dead people.
A bearded man dressed as a lumberjack with an axe resting on his shoulder.

Lumbersexuality and Its Discontents

One hundred years ago, a crisis in urban masculinity created the lumberjack aesthetic. Now it's making a comeback.
Pierce Butler

The Irish Signatory to the US Constitution Who was Also a Slave-Owner

Other emigrants such as Wolfe Tone did not compromise their principles in unfamiliar environments.
Sylvia Plath smiling outdoors.

What We Don’t Know About Sylvia Plath

On revelations from a chance graveside encounter.
Mexican tenor Alfonso Ortiz Tirado, La Prensa publisher Ignacio Lozano, and Hollywood actor Antonio Moreno before a performance to benefit the Mexican Clinic in San Antonio

How Three Texas Newspapers Manufactured Three Competing Images of Immigrants

In Depression-era San Antonio, polarized portraits of Mexicans appealed to the biases of readers.
Drawing of people sitting and standing on crossword boxes while attempting to solve the puzzle

How the Crossword Became an American Pastime

The newspaper standby still rivets our attention a century later.
Skiers queuing to get on The Dollar lift.

How a Railroad Engineer From Nebraska Invented the World's First Ski Chairlift

The device was part of an elaborate plan on behalf of Union Pacific to boost passenger rail travel in the American West.
Anwar El-Sadat, Jimmy Carter, and Menachem Begin after the Camp David Accords.
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Jimmy Carter and the Israel-Hamas War

How America's failures in the Palestinian-Israeli crisis of the 1970s hurt U.S. security and contributed to the current war.
A photograph of the back of a woman's head, superimposed over a photograph of a body of water as if looking out over it.

What if Nostalgia Isn’t What It Used to Be?

As our faith in the future plummets and the present blends with the past, we feel certain that we’ve reached the point where history has fallen apart.
A portrait of Andrew Jackson.

Whiggism Is Still Wrong

Vivek Ramaswamy says he wants to "make hard work cool again." He isn’t the first.
Audubon illustration of a bald eagle with a snake in its talons.

Audubon in This Day and Age

The artist and his birds continue to challenge us.
Black and white photo featuring eight of the nine Scottsboro Boys with NAACP representatives Juanita Jackson Mitchell, Laura Kellum, and Dr. Ernest W. Taggart—was taken inside the prison where the Scottsboro Boys were being held.

Who Were the Scottsboro Nine?

The young black men served a combined total of 130 years for a crime they never committed.
A man holds an axe head between his fingers

After Defeating Hernando de Soto, the Chickasaw Took his Stuff and Remade It

The site offers rare evidence of interactions between de Soto and Indigenous people.
African Americans campaigning for Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker, and Confederate symbols in Georgia.

Minority Rule(s)

Georgia’s competitive runoff election is the result of centuries of white supremacist efforts.
A photograph of James Eads How superimposed over a photograph of vagrant workers at a train station.

St. Louis' Wealthy "King of the Hobos"

Labeled a local eccentric, millionaire James Eads How used his inherited wealth to support vagrant communities.
Randolph L. White, UVA Hospital, Black hospital workers, union newsletter.

UVA and the History of Race: Confronting Labor Discrimination

The UVA president’s commissions on Slavery and on the University in the Age of Segregation were established to find and tell the stories of a painful past.
A techno DJ.

The Battle Over Techno’s Origins

A museum dedicated to techno music has opened in Frankfurt, Germany, and many genre pioneers feel that Black and queer artists in Detroit have been overlooked.
George Kennan sitting at his desk.

George Kennan, Loser

The American foreign policy sage was driven as much by pessimism about the US as antipathy to the Soviet Union.
The Sullivanians of the train from Amagansett, ca. 1972–76.

Where Egos Dare

The secret history of a psychoanalytic cult.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump prepares to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference CPAC held at the Hilton Anatole on Aug. 6, 2022 in Dallas.
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What Civil War History Says About Attempts to Use the Insurrection Clause to Keep Trump From Office

Debates about handling Confederates reveal that the 14th Amendment bars unrepentant insurrectionists from office.
Capital Hill at night.
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Government Shutdowns Were Never Necessary Anyway

Government shutdowns only became possible in 1980, when the Attorney General offered a new interpretation of an 1870 law.
The cult-like aesthetic of technocracy, 1942.

Margaret Mead, Technocracy, and the Origins of AI's Ideological Divide

The anthropologist helped popularize both techno-optimism and the concept of existential risk.
Photo of a woman surfing

How Men Muscled Women Out of Surfing

Why is surfing still stuck in the 1960s when women have always done it?
A ballot from Ireland’s 2020 general election.

Avoiding the PR Mistakes of the Past

The proportional representation (PR) vs. single transferable vote (STV) battle in local elections.
Representative Mike Johnson speaking about his faith on Fox News

Of Little Faith

The relatively unknown Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana has been elevated to the powerful position of Speaker of the House.
Donald Trump, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, and Vince McMhaon at a press conference before Wrestlemania 23, 2007.

The Misunderstood History of American Wrestling

A recent biography of Vince McMahon presents him as an entertainment tycoon who changed culture and politics. The real story is as banal as it is brutal.
Residents of the United States' first government-built planned "utopian" community in Greenbelt.

Greenbelt, Future Home of the FBI, was Planned as a New Deal ‘Utopia’

Greenbelt was designed in 1935 as a community created, built, populated and even furnished entirely by the federal government. Now the FBI is set to move in.
Girl holding a pile of Cabbage Patch Kids dolls

The Droll Capitalist Parable of Cabbage Patch Kids

A new documentary, “Billion Dollar Babies,” shows how a product of Appalachian folk art drew the blueprint for all holiday toy crazes to come.
A man lifts a child in the air. The boy is touching the man's face

60 Years Later, a Secret Service Agent Grapples with JFK Assassination

Paul Landis, 88, is one of the few survivors who had a firsthand view of Kennedy’s assassination 60 years ago Wednesday. He is only now telling his whole story.
Football player on the ground, grabbing his head in pain.
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‘Another Player Down’

How concern about injuries is changing sports.
The Serpent Mound in Ohio

The Story of Ohio's Ancient Native Complex and its Journey for Recognition as a World Heritage Site

An Indigenous sacred site, Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks has served as a military barracks, a fairground and, more recently, a golf course.
J. Edgar Hoover

How the FBI Aided the Rise of White Christian Nationalism in the US

It was J. Edgar Hoover who did more than any fire-breathing churchman to turn fearful white suburbanites into the crusaders of a renewed conservative backlash.
A woman standing with arms outstretched

The Last Lighthouse Keeper in America

In a technological age, impassioned devotees renew an ancient maritime tradition.
Tank on the street of Santiago, Chile.

How Pinochet's Chile Became a Laboratory for Neoliberalism

The Chicago Boys and the tragedy of the Chilean coup.
Snoop Dogg.

The Snoop Dogg Manifesto

A pop star’s road map to decadence.
Books "Three Roads Back" and "Henry David Thoreau."

To Walden

Two new books attempt to grasp Thoreau’s seeming contradictions without reconciling them too easily.
A collage in which a photograph of Blanche Ames Ames is superimposed on a photograph of John F. Kennedy.

How John F. Kennedy Fell for the Lost Cause

And the grandmother who wouldn’t let him get away with it.
Political cartoon depicting busts of Ronald Reagan, Milton Friedman, and Alan Greenspan on a mantle with spider webs.

The End of Milton Friedman’s Reign

The Chicago school ruled supreme over economics—until recently.
From left: snow, three men, and several vehicles with large tires.

The U.S. Army Tried to Build a Secret Nuclear City under Greenland’s Ice

Long before Greenland’s shifting ice threatened sea level rise, it doomed one of the military’s most audacious Cold War projects.
Picture of Frederick Douglass overlaid on a poster advertising a speech of his.

The Annotated Frederick Douglass

In 1866, the famous abolitionist laid out his vision for radically reshaping America in the pages of "The Atlantic."
Group of African-American World War I veterans

The Meaning of ‘Sir’ and ‘Ma’am’

“I’d assumed this practice was a manifestation of military decorum.”
A 1613 engraving of the July 1609 battle between Samuel de Champlain, his men, their Native allies, and Mohawk soldiers.

The Rediscovery of America: Why Native History is American History

Historian Ned Blackhawk’s new book stresses the importance of telling US history with a wider and more inclusive lens.
A collage of images of Henry Ford and newspaper articles about him.

America’s Most Dangerous Anti-Jewish Propagandist

Making sense of anti-Semitism today requires examining Henry Ford’s outsize part in its origins.
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