"The visionary behind the bestselling phenomenon The Fourth Turning looks once again to America's past to predict our future in this startling and hopeful prophecy for how our present era of civil unrest will resolve over the next ten years--and what our lives will look like once it has"-- Twenty-five years ago, Neil Howe and the late William Strauss dazzled the world with a provocative new theory of American history. Looking back at the last 500...

"At 28, Stephanie Land's plans of breaking free from the roots of her hometown in the Pacific Northwest to chase her dreams of attending a university and becoming a writer, were cut short when a summer fling turned into an unplanned pregnancy. She turned to housekeeping to make ends meet, and, with a tenacious grip on her dream to provide her daughter the very best life possible, Stephanie worked days and took classes online to earn a college degree,...

The wholesome image of America propagated by Hollywood in the 1940s, '50s and '60s is one of the most persistent in popular culture: loving wives, smiling children. But off the set, many of the actors who helped create this image were secretly leading very wild lives, and one man in particular was helping them: Scotty Bowers. At a time when sex outside of marriage was taboo, Scotty built up a reputation as the guy who could discreetly fix you up....

An editor for The Washington Post's Style section offers a look back on the Miss America pageant as it approaches its 100th anniversary, spotlighting how it has survived decades of social and cultural change and redefined itself alongside evolving ideas of feminism. For all of its pomp and kitsch, the Miss America pageant is indelibly written into the American story of the past century. From its origins as a summer's-end tourist draw, it blossomed...

From a celebrated activist on the forefront of fighting for intersex representation and rights, a funny, thought-provoking collection of essays about owning your identity and living your truth. Two percent of the world's population, the same percentage of humans who have naturally red hair, is born intersex. Yet many people aren't even familiar with the word. Intersex individuals are born with both male and female reproductive organs, yet many are...

"From her blog, "Adventures from the Bedrooms of African Women," Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah has spent decades talking openly and intimately to African women around the world about sex. Here, she features the stories that most affected her, chronicling her own journey toward sexual freedom. We meet Yami, a pansexual Canadian of Malawian heritage, who describes negotiating the line between family dynamics and sexuality. There's Esther, a cis-gendered hetero...

The duo behind the massively successful podcast "Stuff You Should Know" offers an unexpected look at weird, fascinating, delightful, or unexpected elements of a wide variety of topics, featuring new subjects that they've long wondered about and wanted to explore.

This seminal 1920 work criticizes the emphasis placed on instinct by other sociologists adopting a psychological approach to their subject. Chapters include "The General Nature of Instinct," "The Role of Reason and Will," "The Theory of a Social or Group Mind," and "The Psychology of the Crowd."

Where more poignantly than in a small country graveyard can a traveler fathom the flow of history and tradition? During the past twenty years, Terry G. Jordan has traveled the back roads and hidden trails of rural Texas in search of such cemeteries. With camera in hand, he has visited more than one thousand cemeteries created and maintained by the Anglo-American, black, Indian, Mexican, and German settlers of Texas. His discoveries of sculptured stones...

"Rich in religious and artistic imagery, Trouble the Water is an intriguing exploration of race, sexuality, and identity, particularly where self-hood is in constant flux. These intimate, sensual poems interweave pop culture and history--moving from the Bible through several artistic eras--to interrogate what it means to be, as Austin says, fully human as a "queer, black body" in 21st century America"--