history

The insurmountable contrasts between their visions help explain Russia’s stunted development and hint at its destructive future.

The decades-long conflict is best understood not through secondhand accounts of historians, but the primary accounts of people who actually experienced it.

Although equal parts Hollywood blockbuster and Putinist propaganda, “Trotsky” still manages to capture the good, the bad, and the ugly of Russia’s revolutionary past.

Society-changing ideas form through a three-stage process, argues author Michael Bhaskar.

By taking Satan out of the religious context, storytellers explored the nature of sin in new ways.

From textiles and transportation to chemicals and microchips, a group of researchers proposes a new way to measure the impact of innovation.

Although many dinosaurs never left the ground, they still possessed the basic structural framework for flight.

Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive.

According to literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin, Dostoevsky’s talents were on par with those of William Shakespeare.

Looking with lasers, researchers discovered that many Olmec and Mayan ruins seem to have been constructed from the same blueprint.

Discover the history of homemade sugar skulls, home altars, and fantastical spirit animals.

Growing up in the United States, I remember on Halloween my mother used to say, “Honey, this is not just a day for costumes and candy. You must also remember […]

There’s more to miracles than turning water into wine.

Frank Herbert’s “Dune” refers to a religious desert people who are desperate for a savior to overthrow an evil empire. Sound familiar?

Fear is one of the oldest and most powerful emotions known to man, so it should come as no surprise that horror stories are as old as storytelling itself.

The mad dog’s bite caused a hideous metamorphosis, which transformed its human victim into a nefarious monster.

On long-haul flights, some airlines show shipwrecks on their in-flight maps. The aim is to entertain; the result is often to horrify.

Haunting photographs depict the dead as “still with us.”

The poisoned candy legend is just one way that American fears manifested: as an easily understood threat to innocence.

Will and Ariel Durant were praised for their ability to look at the big picture without losing sight of its little details, even if they did miss some of them.

69 percent of the global diet is “foreign,” says a study that pinpoints the origin of 151 food crops.

The findings at L’Anse aux Meadows mark the the earliest known year by which human migration had encircled the planet.

If you see a political movement embodying all of these traits, watch out.

Going door-to-door on All Hallows Eve to beg for ‘soul cakes’?

Societal breakdown, whether real or imagined, can lead to dramatic responses — like blood-sucking vampires.

Historians know how military technologies evolved, but the reasons why remain poorly understood.

Portraiture is one of the most intimate genres in all of painting, and it has reinvented itself many times across European history.

Time and again, studies have found a connection between authoritarian ideals and meaning in life — a notion backed up by historical documents.

Two mounds of rice and a tiny flag in a sea of curry is enough to re-heat an old territorial conflict.

The new book “Lost Cities, Ancient Tombs” documents 100 archaeological discoveries that changed the world.