The Bunkered Decades: Digging into the Atom Bomb’s Effect on Cold War America
When Americans realized the atom bomb their country created could be turned on them, arts and society alike bunkered down into nightmares of nuclear destruction.
cultural history
Take a Whiff of ‘Perfume’ and Enter the World of Queer Culture
How did Calvin Klein’s gender-neutral CK One, with its scent like “a vodka tonic with lemon twist”, help inspire gender revolution?Perfume follows the fragrant path into queer culture.
The British ‘Idea of Europe’ Is Still a Mess
Shane Weller’s The Idea of Europe, hampered by an unconscious form of Euroscepticism, suggests that British critics are still not ready to listen to their neighbors.
What Made Mahjong Click with Suburban Americans?
In Annelise Heinz’s cultural history, ‘Mahjong’, the role of games tells more significant stories than simply recording how we use our leisure time.
Ronald Brownstein Celebrates and Elegizes LA’s ’70s-Era Cultural Dominance
Ronald Brownstein’s ode to ’70s Los Angeles is, like so many California stories, less about a sustained moment than a bright and briefly thrilling mirage.
‘Anti-vaxxers: How to Challenge a Misinformed Movement’ (excerpt)
Jonathan M. Berman's Anti-vaxxers, argues that anti-vaccination activism is tied closely to how people see themselves as parents and community members. Effective pro-vaccination efforts should emphasize these cultural aspects.
![The American Robot: A Cultural History [By the Book]](https://r7k2t3x9.rocketcdn.me/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/img-5437.jpg)
The American Robot: A Cultural History [By the Book]
In The American Robot, Dustin A. Abnet explores how robots have not only conceptually connected but literally embodied some of the most critical questions in modern culture, as seen in this excerpt from chapter 5 "Building the Slaves of Tomorrow", courtesy of University of Chicago Press.
In Appreciation of Camille Billops and Her Films
Camille Billops moved beyond predictable and well-tread ground to open up space for new narratives in her films—about Black families, Black women, and Black middle-class life—that pulled on her distinctive and unapologetic worldview.
‘Wasteland’, or, How We Went From World War I to White Walkers
In Wasteland: The Great War and the Origins of Modern Horror, historian W. Scott Poole exhumes our obsession with the living dead.
‘Blanket’ Virtually Covers It All
Kara Thompson's Blanket provides an excellent, warm, and informed history in the Bloomsbury Academic Object Lessons series.
Performance Artist, Provocateur, Revolutionary: The Wild Life of Jerry Rubin Finally Drawn Together
A high point of my college years was the chance to truck up to the ballroom in the University of Texas student union for the Yippie vs. Yuppie debate, the supposed showdown between Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin.
