Jennifer Tucker was recently interviewed on the Brady podcast in an episode titled, “The Rising Lethality of the Second Amendment.” Tucker describes her early introduction to guns in popular culture and how she came to study guns as a historian, leading to the establishment of the Center for the Study Read more…
Long before the numbing regularity of school shootings, the Kyle Rittenhouse trial and the current Supreme Court debate over whether to further relax gun laws, composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim was sounding the alarm about the role of guns in American culture. Sondheim, who died on Nov. 26, 2021, had Read more…
In the opening scene of “The Last Duel,” the new film set in 14th-century France, a herald announces the rules for conduct at a tournament to the death. He declares that no members of the public – whatever their social background – are allowed to bring weapons to the event. Read more…
As the U.S. Supreme Court considers a case that may result in vastly expanded rights to carry firearms in public, I argue in this op-ed that we need a “common vocabulary and a shared metric for quantifying the lethality of firearms in historical terms when approaching Second Amendment policy and Read more…
Wax figures have been around for centuries and were very popular around the western world prior to mass media. I was interviewed on the Jobsolete podcast (iHeartRadio) about the wax sculptors who brought celebrities and others to life. “Wax was used over the centuries… for death masks, for making wax Read more…
In the 18th century, “balloon mania” swept across Europe, encouraged by the circulation of writings, lithographs, balloon fashion, and memorabilia. I spoke on the Jobsolete podcast about aeronauts—the adventurers, entertainers, and self-trained scientists who built and flew balloons.
I was interviewed by The New York Times about a trend among some police departments and news outlets to end the practice of releasing and publicizing mug shots of people accused of crimes, absent an immediate public safety reason to do so. I discussed how these mug shots have been Read more…
In this opinion piece co-authored with Peter Rutland, I reflect on the National Archives’ censoring of the messages on protest signs in a photo taken at the Women’s March in January 2017. This action was swiftly and universally condemned by professional historians and curators. It both transpired in our era Read more…
Near the beginning of the film “The Aeronauts,” a giant gas-filled balloon called the “Mammoth” departs from London’s Vauxhall Gardens and ascends into the clouds, revealing a bird’s eye view of London. To some moviegoers, these breathtaking views might seem like nothing special: Modern air travel has made many of Read more…
Amid renewed national debate over gun control, I write in The Washington Post about how concerted advocacy from groups such as the National Rifle Association has popularized a new interpretation of American history to fit a modern gun rights narrative, threatening to lead the Supreme Court further astray as it Read more…
