“A brutal regime hid hundreds of people’s remains. Can new forensic science help find them—and regain public trust?”
History
Rabelaisian Enumerations: On Lists
“What sort of collection should a library hold? How should books be classified? What is the function of lists?”
Inside the Vatican’s Secret Saint-Making Process
“Canonization has long been a way for the Catholic church to shape its image. The Vatican is preparing to anoint its first millennial saint, but how does it decide who is worthy?”
Racing’s Deadliest Day
“How the 1955 Le Mans disaster changed motorsport forever.”
Soundscapes of the Silenced
“In late Renaissance Florence one in five women lived behind institutional walls whose rule was sensory mortification. Historians are struggling to recover their inexpressible secrets.”
Santa Maria
“A youthful obsession with Dorothea Lange’s ‘Migrant Mother’ turns to frustration over how its subject, Florence Owens Thompson, an Indigenous woman, has been misperceived.”
No One Wanted Them to Win: Texas’ First Baseball Champions
“They could feel their accomplishment slowly being forgotten. The memory of their championship dying with them.”
Daylighting a Brook in the Bronx
“An ode to an underground waterway and the restorative effort to unbury it.”
The Lessons of Lore
Ghost stories reveal our collective anxieties amid times of change.
