Kinship and Contradictions

Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz on the complexities of Native American identity

Overconsumed

Adam Minter on what happens to all the stuff we downsize, declutter, and discard

Fiction, Fakery, and Factory Farming

Spanish novelist Munir Hachemi talks about Living Things

American Horror Story

Jeremy Dauber on our obsession with fear

The Writing on the Wall

Augustine Sedgewick on his discovery of Henry David Thoreau’s connection to slavery

This Woman’s Work

Susannah Gibson opens the parlor doors on 18th-century feminism

Queen of the Night

Leigh Ann Henion embraces the creatures that light up the dark

A Toothsome Tale

Bill Schutt chomps through millennia to share the story of our pearly whites

A Rebel to Remember

Gregory P. Downs on the late Anthony E. Kaye’s groundbreaking history of Nat Turner

Going for Gold

Joshua Prager on a forgotten Olympic gymnast whose 1904 record still hasn’t been beaten

The Gray Edges of Blackness

Emily Bernard’s essays explore her own experience of race in America

Postcolonial Punchlines

Alain Mabanckou on what a joke can do

Heroin’s Long History

What our historical fascination with opium can tell us about the present

Searching for the Spirit of Acid House

Has electronic dance music lost its soul?

The Microscopic House Guest

Coming to terms with the abundance of life in our homes

Opera 101

A crash course in how to love one of the most elusive art forms

Through a Lens Darkly

A photographer on how we represent conflict

Too Much Future

How East German punks tore down the Berlin Wall

Bad Blood

Why the 17th-century vampire still haunts us today

The Future Is Feminist Book Collecting

How women are shaking up the rarefied world of antiquarian books

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