In the winter of 1905, a museum in Chicago published a book with a plain brown cover and a plain title: The Traditions of the Hopi. The man who had spent years collecting it was Henry Voth, a Mennonite missionary who had come to the Hopi mesas of northern Arizona to replace the Hopi religion. … Read more

At his peak, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán was making a million dollars a day and could not put a single cent of it in a bank. So he spent it fast, on things nobody could trace. He bought bulletproof Mercedes with gunports cut into the doors, Lamborghinis dipped in gold, and Ferraris that were later … Read more

On the morning of Monday, October 19, 1891, a cattleman named H. Brule rode up the creek road to the Fenward homestead in the Ozark hollow of Ash Creek, Missouri, about forty miles south of Springfield. He had arranged to meet his neighbor Otis Fenward to discuss splitting the cost of a new fence line. … Read more

The story of the American middle class begins in the summer of 1945, when the United States emerged from World War II in a position no nation had ever occupied before or since. America held roughly half of the world’s economic output with only about five percent of its population. Every other industrial power—Britain, France, … Read more

In the autumn of 1887, on a stony shoulder of the Serdu Valley, Orurel Vuia set his theodolite on its three legs, leveled the bubble until it floated dead center, locked the brass tight, and discovered that the mountain was not the same shape twice. He was a land surveyor, forty-one years old, a man … Read more

In 1950, New York City had more than 200,000 single-room occupancy hotels, the cheap, no-frills rooms that housed the city’s working poor, its elderly, its recent immigrants, and its single men and women. By the early years of the twenty-first century, that number had collapsed to around 19,000. The same story played out in city … Read more

In 1935, American cities had been running on electricity for half a century. New York skyscrapers glittered at night. Detroit factories hummed around the clock. Families in Chicago, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles had refrigerators in their kitchens and radios in their living rooms. Yet just a few miles beyond those city limits, entire communities still … Read more

On 25 August 1942, Prince George, Duke of Kent, boarded an RAF Short Sunderland flying boat bound for Iceland, where he was to inspect RAF installations. The aircraft never reached its destination. In poor weather, it struck a hillside near Caithness, Scotland, killing all on board. Prince George was thirty-nine years old, the first member … Read more

In 1897, the crowds pressed six miles deep through the streets of London, and the cheering was so loud that the 78-year-old Queen could hardly hear the bands. Victoria, Empress of India, passed before them in an open carriage, the embodiment of imperial confidence. Yet the woman who received that ovation had spent four decades … Read more