Retracing the writer’s life nearly 60 years after her death.

Power worship blurs political judgement because it leads, almost unavoidably, to the belief that present trends will continue. Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible. If the Japanese have conquered south Asia, then they will keep south Asia for ever, if the Germans have captured Tobruk, they will infallibly capture Cairo; if the Russians are in Berlin, it will not be long before they are in London: and so on. This habit of mind leads also to the belief that things will happen more quickly, completely, and catastrophically than they ever do in practice. The rise and fall of empires, the disappearance of cultures and religions, are expected to happen with earthquake suddenness, and processes which have barely started are talked about as though they were already at an end.

According to the movie version, they died side by side, guns blazing, in the crosshairs of half a Bolivian regiment. It’s a great Hollywood ending that happens to be true, mostly: they left America… then died in Bolivia. What Hollywood didn’t know is that Butch and Sundance escaped.

The unlikely rise of the 1983 national croquet champions.

Decades on, a massive half-built monument in the Black Hills remains controversial.

In the days after 9/11, a photo of an unknown man falling from the South Tower appeared in publications across the globe. This is the story of that photograph, and of the search to find the man pictured in it.

On what is recorded and what is left out.

On the “white gold” that fueled slavery.

On the history and origin of the crab rangoon.

Our founding ideals of liberty and equality were false when they were written. For generations, black Americans have fought to make them true.

A friendship born out of the ruins of a nation, a dangerous journey home, and a 40-year search for the truth.

In 1910, East Texas saw one of America’s deadliest post-Reconstruction racial purges. One survivor’s descendants have waged an uphill battle for generations to unearth that violent past.

The black men from Pittsburgh who made up America’s original paramedic corps wanted to make history and save lives—starting with their own.

Madewell’s authenticity problem, written by the great-grandson of the company’s founder.

How a 22-year-old mother became the first woman to drive cross-country.

In the Southwest’s border region, historical reenactment meets today’s reality.

The roots musician is inspired by the evolving legacy of the black string band.

In 1936, Karp Lykov whisked his family into the Siberian wilderness to escape Bolshevik persecution. They remained there, alone, until discovered by a helicopter crew in 1978.

Ideas on labor and capital have remained fixed while the means of production grow ever more alienating.

On the curious life of Archibald Butt, confidant to President Taft and tragic victim of the sinking Titanic.

As much as the narrative of Butt’s heroism meant to the family, to the White House, to the military, it seems all too cinematic. The reality is that the experience was probably a great annoyance to him, right up until the moment it became a nightmare.

In late 1960s London, famed psychoanalyst R.D. Laing created a radical asylum—one with no doctors, no locks, and no limits.

After all these years, it’s still there, in the back of her mind, lurking. No matter how good things are going, it never quite goes away, this feeling that she should have died that day. And her brush with death is the first thing that strangers tend to notice about her, like a limp or a disfigurement. Once they find out where she went to high school, that’s all they want to talk about.

In 1942, a volley of torpedoes sent the U.S.S. Wasp to the bottom of the Pacific. Earlier this year, a team of wreck hunters set out to find it.

On the book that Hitler called his “bible” and the man who wrote it.

A new wife, a dead husband, and the arsenic panic that shook the Victorian world.