My summer begins when I bite into a perfect Brandywine or Cherokee Purple—whichever ripens first. The flavor is part of my taste memory, yet still—each season—the experience is fresh and new. Tomatoes are the reason I plant my garden. Continue Reading Miriam Rubin: Talking Tomatoes
The political influence of black Chicago emerged decades before Obama announced his first candidacy for president, during the years of the Great Migration when tens of thousands of southern blacks relocated to northern cities. Continue Reading Lisa Materson: African American Women, the Great Migration, and the Obama Presidency
The image of the armed woman as white, suburban-looking, and thoroughly domesticated is but one aspect of women’s gun culture, and women’s relationship to guns, in the United States. Continue Reading Laura Browder: Women’s Gun Culture in America
Jesus has had a long, exciting, funny, and painful life in America. From the slave ships of the Atlantic Ocean to the Hollywood sets along the Golden Coast, from the visions out of Indian country to the artwork of children, from the firing of bullets to the construction of billboards, Jesus has been born, crucified, and resurrected in America’s racial sagas. Those of the twenty-first century laugh because there is so much to cry over. Continue Reading Edward J. Blum and Paul Harvey: Jesus Jokes and Racial Pain
Where did he find his inspiration? Frequently in what we would call gaffes. Those little slips that so reveal the true character of any politician helped to inspire Nast’s pencil to new heights. Continue Reading Fiona Deans Halloran: Thomas Nast, Horace Greeley, and the Gift of Gaffe
I was back in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, the lowland agro-industrial capital of Bolivia for the months of July and August 2012 in order to understand a new political conflict that had exploded between the government of Evo Morales and lowland Indigenous groups in 2011. Continue Reading Nicole Fabricant: Santa Cruz Civic Leaders and New Strategic Alliances with Indigenous Protestors in Bolivia
The new consensus has been confirmed since Obama’s victory. His inaugural address announced the end of a decade of war and the start of a process of national reinvention meant to address challenges on the home front. However sensible this new consensus may be, it suffers from a major flaw: its profound vulnerability. Continue Reading Michael H. Hunt: The New Foreign Policy Concensus: A Word of Caution
Along with the growth of tribal bureaucracies, this turn toward tribal capitalism has given Indians new reasons to articulate, ponder, and debate some of the basic principles that guide or should guide their economic affairs—to consider in particular whether economic aims and relations in Indian communities do or should differ from those that predominate in the United States. Continue Reading Alexandra Harmon: Economic Disparities in Native American Communities
On 22 January 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court announced its decision in Roe v. Wade, the abortion rights case that culminated in one of the most controversial legal rulings in the country’s history. Forty years later, numerous myths continue to circulate about the contents and meanings of Roe. Here are five of the most significant. Continue Reading Marc Stein: Five Myths about Roe v. Wade
Before the war began, few would have foreseen Hampton emerging as a die-hard Confederate. After President Abraham Lincoln called for troops to suppress the Southern rebellion, however, Hampton no longer hesitated. Continue Reading Rod Andrew Jr.: Wade Hampton, One of the Last Confederate Generals to Surrender
People rarely invite my husband and me to their homes for dinner, and many who do become quivering blancmanges of nerves. One of my husband’s friends invited us, then emailed me five or six times during the week before to be sure that the menu met with the approval of The Food Writer. Continue Reading Debbie Moose: Feed Me
Bill would call me, usually early in the morning and, after his usual greeting of “Hello, neighbor,” say with an obvious twinkle in his voice, “Now, you ought to put me on the payroll; I’m working hard for the Press!” I would, of course, agree with him. Continue Reading Kate Torrey: Remembering Bill Friday
Today marks the 70th anniversary of Casablanca’s world premier on November 26, 1942. In the following post, M. Todd Bennett, author of One World, Big Screen: Hollywood, the Allies, and World War II, reveals what fans may not know about the movie, widely considered among the best ever made. Continue Reading M. Todd Bennett: How and Why Humphrey Bogart, in Casablanca, Taught American Moviegoers to Risk Their Necks for Others’ Well-Being
Developed at the beginning of the twentieth century, movies quickly arose to become the cultural centerpiece, especially during Hollywood’s “golden era” of the 1930s and ’40s. In 1941, 85 million Americans—85 million, more than three-fifths of the overall U.S. population, which totaled 131 million at the time—attended movie theaters each week. Cinema’s remarkable popularity led observers to conclude that movies strongly influenced impressionable theatergoers. Continue Reading M. Todd Bennett: When Behaviorism Went to the Movies
2012 marks the two hundredth anniversary of the first Protestant American foreign missionaries. Over the course of those years, the movement’s fortunes and its public presence have waxed and waned. In 1812, the movement boasted five missionaries sailing to the Indian subcontinent. One hundred years later, its most prominent members were recruited for diplomatic missions. Yet whatever the public perception of missionaries, their work raises significant questions, even for people who might have little interest in the movement itself. Continue Reading Sarah E. Ruble: All Americans Are Missionaries
It’s not easy to write a biography of a living person, for a variety of reasons. Bill made it easy. I spent more than 40 hours interviewing him. He was unfailingly generous in offering his time, including a last round of interviews after I had written a draft of the book. We got to know each other well. I developed a habit of drinking Diet Cokes because that was what he always offered, and only recently have I shaken the habit. Continue Reading William A. Link: Remembering Bill Friday
Vann Bighorse, the director of the Osage Cultural Center, expressed the opinion that Congress could take a lesson from the Osage In-lon-shka dances. He had explained that during the dances, everything (especially political fighting) was put aside for those three weeks in June and everyone from the drum keeper to the cooks focused on making the whole thing run smoothly. Continue Reading Jean Dennison: Osage Nation Reform: From Colonial Entanglement to Citizen Engagement
Jesus was part of the Revolution and formation of the United States, but not as much as one might expect. As a physical presence, he was almost completely absent. And in the language of law and legislation for the new republic, he was virtually as nonexistent. In comparison to how prominent Jesus would become in the United States of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Revolution and founding of the new nation were profoundly Christ-less. Continue Reading Edward J. Blum and Paul Harvey: The Christ-less Revolution
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