A professor returns to the California military base where she grew up to make sense of her family’s role developing weapons for the US government.
book excerpt
Posted inBooks, History, Science & Nature, Story, Unapologetic Women
A British Seaweed Scientist Is Revered in Japan as ‘The Mother of the Sea’
Kathleen Drew-Baker died never having set foot in Japan, and never knowing what an impact her research would make. Plus, how to build a lazy bed, how to cook Irish blancmange, and other surprising seaweed stories.
Posted inNonfiction, Story
The Cowboy Image and the Growth of Western Music
How did cowboy hats and boots become the visual iconography of American rural music?
Posted inNonfiction
Leaving a Good Man Is Hard To Do
When women end relationships, it seems like the emotion we most acutely feel is the guilt of having pushed it away.
Posted inBooks, History, Nonfiction, Science & Nature, Story
A Beast for the Ages
Why do we love (and fear, and kill) polar bears with so much intensity?
Posted inEditor's Pick
How to Stay Married After Your Baby is Born, or, I’m not Divorced Yet
An excerpt of “Now My Heart is Full,” Laura June’s memoir, about the challenges new parenthood placed on her and her husband — and their marriage.
Posted inNonfiction, Story, Unapologetic Women
The Wheel, the Woman, and the Human Body
How the newly evolved bicycle helped liberate women and modernize America’s concept of fitness.
Posted inBooks, History, Science & Nature, Story
Taming the Great American Desert
By advocating for agriculture in the arid West, Major John Wesley Powell challenged the way America viewed its right to develop the continent.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Story
The Inward Empire
A new father with early-stage MS sets out to understand the interiors of his daughter’s mind, and his own.
Posted inBooks, Culture, Nonfiction, Story
The Daughter as Detective
A bibliophile tries to understand her father through his favorite Swedish mystery books.