Celebrity Life
Joan Didion, Author and Essayist Dies, at 87
(NEW YORK) — Joan Didion, the revered author and essayist whose precise social and personal commentary in such classics as “The White Album” and “The Year of Magical Thinking” made her a uniquely clear-eyed critic of turbulent times, has died. She was 87. Didion’s publisher Penguin Random House announced the author’s death on Thursday. She…
The Forgotten Woman Who Helped Save Countless Birds by Challenging the Fashion for Feathers
A global trade in feathers, with London at its heart, saw hundreds of millions of birds killed every year. Emily Williamson waged a long and furious campaign against it
How George Washington Organized the First Large-Scale Immunization Campaign in American History
This history carries a lesson for present-day holdouts against COVID-19 vaccines
The Surprising Political History of the Fight Against the Equal Rights Amendment
Discussion of the ERA often focuses on the way the New Right stopped ratification by the states in the 1970s. But earlier opposition to the proposed amendment involved a bipartisan and ideologically diverse coalition in Congress
What We Can Learn From the Last Time the U.K. Held Elections During a Pandemic
The U.K. general election of 1918 was a ‘cynical muddle’ held as influenza killed thousands across a country emerging from World War I
How a Miniature Emancipation Proclamation Helped Recruit Black Soldiers During the Civil War
The sight of Black soldiers distributing print to other Black people in a state that criminalized the teaching of reading to the enslaved summoned up a future shaped by the possibility of increased self-determination
Alexis de Tocqueville Warned Americans About How Presidential Elections Could Go Wrong
Tocqueville's writing shows that divisive elections are nothing new—but that what happens after the election has definitely changed