Harry Benjamin, the Maverick

Through his participation in the medical community, the theater community, and his connections to literary artists, Benjamin openly questioned how medical professionals and society at large defined and categorized gender.

Turpentine in Time

Each community had an overseer who supervised the operations and the commissary. He also enforced the law.

When Witches Take Flight

I was quickly surprised to find that flight — a defining feature of the modern image of the witch — figured relatively little in the earliest medieval sources.

Man of Smoke

“I was trying to write the life of a man who had no life. What other options did I have?”

Oscar’s Hill

A decades-long quest, bordering on obsession, leads one man to a small village in the Sierra Juarez—and, perhaps, to the Hill of the Jaguar.

Stumbling Stones

Somewhat to my surprise, I didn’t go to my field’s major conference last November. Instead I accompanied a 97-year-old man to the town he fled in 1938.

Story-Shaped Things

Historians tell stories about the past. This philosopher thinks those stories are often wrong–and dangerous.

No Refuge

When Congress gave the Secretary of Labor discretion over any immigrant “likely to become a public charge,” they weren’t expecting someone like Frances Perkins.