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Featured Discoveries
The Federal Writers’ Project: How America Put Its Stories to Work
During the Great Depression, the United States hired thousands of writers, editors, researchers, and interviewers to document the country’s places, people, and memories. Their work created a remarkably democratic portrait…
Read more →The Auburn Cord Duesenberg Museum: Where America’s Car Story Still Has a Home
In an Indiana factory town, one remarkable museum preserves the ambition, artistry, and engineering that shaped the American automobile.
Read more →Kalambo Falls: How Ancient Wood Rewrote the Story of Human Building
A pair of interlocking logs preserved beside Zambia’s Kalambo River shows that hominins were shaping and joining wood nearly half a million years ago—far earlier than the oldest known wooden…
Read more →Latest Discoveries
How Small Towns Became the Backbone of America
Why Towns Appeared American towns often grew where transportation routes, water supplies, natural resources or government services came together. A railroad stop…
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The Caldecott Medal: How Picture Books Became a Serious Art Form
Since 1938, the Caldecott Medal has helped readers see children’s picture books as works of imagination, design, and artistic achievement.
Read more →As Shelters Fill and Benefits Shrink, Arizona’s Community Responders Step Into the Gap
With Phoenix-area shelters at capacity and Arizona households absorbing a steep drop in federal food aid, the people holding together the state’s…
Read more →Blue Highways: How a Quiet Road Book Changed the Way America Travels
William Least Heat-Moon’s 1982 journey through small towns and back roads turned overlooked places into destinations—and helped make slow travel a literary…
Read more →The Smithsonian Folklife Festival: How Living Traditions Found a Place on the National Mall
For more than half a century, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival has invited musicians, cooks, craftspeople, farmers, storytellers, and communities to present culture…
Read more →Percy Julian: How a Chemist Turned Barriers Into Breakthroughs
Percy Julian helped make important medicines more accessible, developed a fire-suppressing foam from soy protein, and built a scientific career in a…
Read more →Stonewall: The New York Uprising That Changed the American Rights Movement
In June 1969, a police raid at a small Greenwich Village bar became a turning point in American history. The uprising at the Stonewall Inn helped transform LGBTQ+ activism from a scattered struggle into a more visible, organized movement.
