“Monticello was a Black space. People of African descent shaped the entire landscape: how the food tasted, what the place sounded and felt like.”
Smithsonian Magazine
Posted inHighlight, Nonfiction, Quotes
Blame It All on Tibbles: The Case for Keeping Fifi Indoors
At Smithsonian Magazine, Rachel E. Gross explores why keeping your pet cat inside is for the birds.
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Moral Cost of Cats
Pete Marra, head of the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center, is pushing a controversial conservation idea: that as the single-biggest man-made danger to bird and small mammal populations in the United States, outdoor and feral cat populations should be controlled, either by keeping pets inside, or by euthanasia and sterilize-and-return programs.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes, Unapologetic Women
How Are There Still Beauty Pageants When Feminists Have Been Protesting Them for 50 Years?
Roxane Gay considers the lasting impact of protests against the Miss America Pageant that took place half a century ago.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Fifty Years Ago, Protesters Took on the Miss America Pageant and Electrified the Feminist Movement
In the wake of a sexist email scandal that has led to new management of the Miss America Pageant, Bad Feminist author Roxane Gay reports on 1968 protests by radical feminists against all that the pageant stands for.
Posted inHistory, Nonfiction, Quotes
How the Burning Brigade Broke Free
In the village of Ponar, in present-day Lithuania, occupying Nazis shot nearly 100,000 people, then exhumed and burned the bodies in an effort to remove all traces of the atrocity. The prisoners forced to dig up and burn the bodies of their countrymen knew there was only one way to get out alive: escape.
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Holocaust’s Great Escape
A remarkable discovery in Lithuania — an escape tunnel from the Nazi killing site at Ponar — brings a legendary tale of survival back to life.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Digging Through The Past to Understand the Present
Revisit a fascinating story from Smithsonian Magazine on what the discovery of a 3,500-year-old soldier’s tomb in southwestern Greece tells us about the Mycenaeans, the Minoans, and the roots of Western civilization.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Spelling Skills and the Meaning of the American Dream
In 1931, the historian James Truslow Adams defined the American Dream as “a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable.” His book, The Epic of America, may have popularized the term, but the dream dates back at least to […]
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
Unusual Hobbies: A Reading List
My boyfriend and I share a love of cryptozoology and hidden places. For Valentine’s Day, he bought us matching “explorer” jackets with Nessie and Mothman patches affixed to the sleeves. We have standard hobbies, too—reading, writing, listening to music—but podcasts about Bigfoot and poring over Atlas Obscura is where things get a little weird. In this collection, you’ll meet folks who look at planes, at compasses, at building blocks and at each other (in full Civil War uniform, no less).