Linton Weeks

Manners still matter.

Later this month in Los Angeles, at the annual convention of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society — a group that focuses on making systems, devices and machines more human-friendly — researchers plan to report on a study showing that people want robots to be ...

Just a few weeks ago, the nonprofit Trust for the National Mall staged a music festival — featuring Drake and the Strokes — to benefit the remarkable public space in Washington, D.C., that includes some of America's most recognizable landmarks, including the Jefferson Memorial, Lincoln Memorial, Martin Luther ...

The tradition of lavish, super-indulgent dinners in America, says Becky Libourel Diamond, author of the soon-to-be-published book The Thousand Dollar Dinner, comes from the fact that our country has always been known as the Land of Opportunity for Pursuers of Happiness.

Pass the champagne and caviar.

"Expensive dinners ...

For decades, The Daughter of Dawn was a "lost film" — a buried American treasure. The 1920 multireel, silent movie was rediscovered and restored a few years ago.

Only recently has the movie become more widely available. You can watch it on Netflix. You can also see some representative clips ...

For several years now, a popular purveyor of tacos has suggested that Americans who get the munchies late at night are participating in a contemporary dining ritual called "Fourthmeal."

New research from the Salk Institute in La Jolla, Calif., suggests that Americans eat throughout most of ...

Historians are telling us that we have seen Donald Trump before — well, parts of him anyway. In other words, the man who wants to be the American president has some American precedents.

Trump has been compared, in variegated ways, to earlier American presidents and statesmen. Catherine Allgor, ...

History can be tricky. Something that you think has never happened before has, actually, happened before. Someone who seems thoroughly modern actually lived long ago. And a quote that sounds up-to-the-nanosecond contemporary was actually uttered more than 100 years ago.

So let's see how you do: Here are seven items ...

Fin-de-siecle America — in the final years of the 19th century — was fanatical about fads.

"There is something about the end of a century that sets people to thinking about their collective prospects and ultimate destiny," writes historian H.W. Brands in The Reckless Decade: America in the 1890s.

And ...

The legendary Gold Rush of the late 1840s was a game changer in American history.

The promise of overnight wealth — and the industries that rose up around the wealth-seekers — lured legions of people from all over the world to Northern California and to cities and towns along the ...

Maybe it was in the spirit of rebellion against the strict rules of American society during the Victorian Era. Maybe it was a personal sense of freedom and expansion that mirrored the national movement westward. Or maybe it was a case of safety, and certainty, in numbers. But for some ...

Florida Cowboys Week: Part Two

The state of Florida has a rich and diverse tradition of cattle ranching. Recently we explored the black cowboys of Florida. There are other distinctive elements to the state's past as well.

"Indian cowboys," for instance.

Long thought of as adversaries ...

Florida Cowboys Week: Part One

To Mary K. Herron and others, the history of black cowboys in Florida is a venerable element of the state's past.

To that end, Herron, who is director of development at the Florida Agricultural Museum in Palm Coast, is busy assembling a traveling ...

Once thought to be ephemeral and fleeting, the keeping of keepsakes online may be the best way to hold on to — and to share — historic photographs and documents.

That's the thinking behind "Culture in Transit," a project that "democratizes and preserves New York's cultural heritage by ...

The brutal death of Emmett Till — an African-American teenager — in Mississippi in August of 1955, and the subsequent acquittal of his white murderers by an all-white jury, was a pivotal moment in the surge for civil rights in America.

Till, 14, was kidnapped, beaten and shot ...

Just about a century ago, an international student at a college in the United States was telling someone what she likes best about the English language: American slang. "I must learn it," she said. "It is so unexpected."

For example, she was surprised to learn — according to a November ...

Strange, isn't it, we remark to Sandra L. Oliver — founder and editor of Food History News — that Americans in the 19th century ate foods such as robins and calf's foot jelly and boiled eels.

She cautions against criticism of previous generations or other cultures. "You are ...

The clubs, balls, vast verdant courses, garish outfits: Golf in America has arguably become rather ho-hum and predictable as the 2015 PGA Championship tournament tees off this week at Whistling Straits in Sheboygan, Wis.

But over the years, various people — in attempts to expand the American golfing experience — ...

Seaside, riverside and lakeshore beaches in America today are democratic scenes — level playing fields for folks of all stripes.

Not so in summers past.

Dunes And Don'ts

Time was, certain beaches in America were off limits to people of color. Some beachgoers publicly objected to women and men bathing ...

In the early years of photography, shooters in America began taking pictures of people from the back. Thumb through old turn-of-the-20th century snapshots — in this country and in Europe — and you are liable to see women, men, couples facing "the wrong direction."

Sometimes you see only one eye ...

Right out of the starting blocks, the presidential campaign of Donald Trump has been headline-making controversial — with stories of the candidate remarking on rape, expressing disgust with a nursing mother and calling into question Sen. John McCain's heroism as a prisoner of war.