It’s very subjective.

A very tasty menu.

The way we see the future shapes our choices today.

Episode 1.

An editor's not-so-occult revelations.

Sometimes your bright ideas don't pan out.

I’m a big fan of ZEIT Now1 as an application hosting provider. The way the service abstracts all of the cloud computing details and allows teams to focus on building and deploying web applications is fantastic. That said, I had a lot of trouble setting up secure environment variables for my first application to use....

Early on in my career as a software developer I thought my primary contribution was writing code. After all, software engineers are paid to ship software and writing code is a key component of that. It took several years for me to realize that there are numerous other contributions that go into shipping software (if...

It is the unofficial start of summer; beaches open, some of us think of auto racing, and we hope for suitable weather for a barbecue. Memorial Day is upon us, and its national observance is 150 years old this year, the holiday Americans once called Decoration Day. The veterans’ group known as the Grand Army...

The post Observing Memorial Day as “Decoration Day” appeared first on New-York Historical Society.

Between 1945 and 1960 the number of television sets in use in the United States rose from a few thousand to approximately 60 million. Although many of the programs shown originated in New York City, many of Gotham’s denizens had to endure a steadily degrading signal reception. The cause: new buildings in the vertically growing...

The post Wiring Manhattan: Sterling Communications and Cable Television in New York City appeared first on New-York Historical Society.

From the horrors of Malleus Maleficarum (1486) to the fervor of the Salem Witch Trials (1692), many women were accused of and persecuted for witchcraft. These women (and some men) were often poor, middle-aged, and considered to have abrasive personalities. These personalities disrupted the sensibilities of the rigid and religiously devout communities of New England....

The post Now on View: “Betwixt the Devil and the Witch” appeared first on New-York Historical Society.

Set to commence on January 17, 1920, the great social experiment of Prohibition had already begun with a “dry run” for Americans adapting to the restriction of alcohol inspired by World War I. That was followed by a full year anticipating the event through the process of Constitutional amendment and the passage of enforcement legislation...

The post Now on View–“Padlocked”: New York’s Prohibition Years appeared first on New-York Historical Society.

Each era spawns its acronyms. (POTUS, FLOTUS, and SCOTUS, anyone?) Some World War II acronyms remain familiar, like WAC, for Women’s Army Corps, and its earlier incarnation, WAAC, Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps. Maybe you know of the WAVES—Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service–a branch of the U.S. Navy in which women could enlist. But chances are you’ve never heard of...

The post “Till Victory is History”: Remembering the W.I.V.E.S. of World War II appeared first on New-York Historical Society.

John B. Cooper prepared to set sail in pursuit of sperm whales aboard the ship Franklin in August 1833. The voyage to the Pacific Ocean originated in Sag Harbor, East Hampton, Long Island. Like many sailors, Cooper kept a log of weather conditions, navigational calculations, and daily activities aboard ship. There are also several poems, essays,...

The post From the Lab: Conserving John B. Cooper’s Whaling Journal appeared first on New-York Historical Society.

Sometimes people leave behind a little piece of history that is worth so much to modern day scholars. We do not know who William Worcester Dudley was, but between December 1785 and October 1786, he kept a food diary that tracked every meal he ate for breakfast, dinner, and supper. While it was not uncommon for people to...

The post Victuals, Mincemeat, Pudding, and Veal: William Worcester Dudley’s Food Diary appeared first on New-York Historical Society.

Harry Potter may have come and gone here at the New-York Historical Society but it turns out that the interplay of magic and science that enlivens the Potter series can still be found in the Historical Society’s collections. On this occasion, it emerges from an unidentified colonial physician’s account book. Although it’s generally written in legible scripts, the...

The post Mercury, Sulphur and Vitriol: A Colonial Physician’s Accounts appeared first on New-York Historical Society.

On October 31, 1969, Time published “The Homosexual: Newly Visible, Newly Understood.” While the controversial piece discussed the public’s growing consciousness of the gay community, it also presented harmful stereotypes, a reflection of the markedly conservative coverage of gay rights issues Time maintained throughout most of its history. At the height of the AIDS crisis, in June...

The post Now on View–“Advocacy Within”: Gay Rights at Time Warner appeared first on New-York Historical Society.

2019 is a year to celebrate the richness of American literature, as poet James Russell Lowell was born on February 22, 1819, two months ago we marked the 200th anniversary of the birth of Walt Whitman, and now we certainly want to pause and note that Herman Melville has his bicentennial natal day on August 1....

The post A “Bartleby” Tour for Herman Melville’s 200th Birthday appeared first on New-York Historical Society.

Hello, I’m Alec Ferretti, and I recently interned with the Archival Processing Unit at the New-York Historical Society. I’m a professional genealogist by day and a grad student at NYU in their Archives program by night. I set aside every Monday of the spring semester to work on processing collections here in the N-YHS manuscripts division. On...

The post Exploring a life lost to history: Industrialist Irving Olds appeared first on New-York Historical Society.

The entertainment and moral education of children through books has not always been intertwined. American Puritanism frowned upon the fantastical imaginations that children often have and appreciate. Many children’s books from the eighteenth century instead emphasize the importance of virtuous behavior and the devastating consequences of vice through cautionary tales. Not until the nineteenth century...

The post Now on View–A Tale for Youth: Amusement and Instruction in American Children’s Books appeared first on New-York Historical Society.

On February 22, 1865, Private William Joseph Nelson wrote a petition for leniency from prison. The black Ohioan was being held as a deserter and explained why he had to leave the army. He said that recruiters cheated him out of his much-needed bounty, forcing him to abandon his post and see to his family....

The post The Loving Black Mercenaries of the Civil War appeared first on New-York Historical Society.

Little is known about long-lived David Grim (1737-1826) outside of the brief personal account of his life held by the New-York Historical Society Library. What can be said is that his memory was sound. A tavern keeper, merchant, and owner of Hessian’s Coffee House from 1767 to 1789, Grim sought to leave behind more than an...

The post “A Correct and Perfect Recollection”: David Grim’s Map of Prerevolutionary Manhattan appeared first on New-York Historical Society.

The grim new numbers of the cases and deaths from COVID-19 reach us every day. As laypeople, we want to tune them out at times, but they are crucial to medical practice and public health. Certainly, we see that in history: Here is the sobering list of yellow fever deaths at Bellevue Hospital in 1795...

The post “Take No Medicine Without Advice”: New York Reacts to Pandemics Past appeared first on New-York Historical Society.

George B. Post (1837-1913), an American architect trained in the Beaux-Arts tradition, is perhaps best known for his New York City landmark buildings, including the New York Stock Exchange, City College, and the Brooklyn Historical Society. After working as a draftsman for Richard Morris Hunt, Post opened his first architectural firm in New York City...

The post Lab Notes: Conserving a George B. Post Presentation Drawing appeared first on New-York Historical Society.

Will we ever get back to watching baseball at Yankee Stadium? It is a fair and frustrating question. Perhaps, as therapy, it helps to go back in time before Yankee Stadium (either the original or the newer one) was even there.  We get this view from the Subway Construction Photograph Collection, and some parts of...

The post Before Yankee Stadium: The View from the Subway Construction Photograph Collection appeared first on New-York Historical Society.

More than nine million active duty and retired military members and their families, including two million children, receive benefits from TRICARE, the military’s health care program. TRICARE offers health maintenance organization (HMO) and preferred provider organization (PPO) options.

Join the Regional Educational Laboratory Mid-Atlantic and stakeholders from the New Jersey and Delaware Departments of Education for a free four-part series on culturally responsive practices as a strategy for improving education outcomes.

Parents who participated in the Child Support Noncustodial Parent Employment Demonstration (CSPED) reported substantially higher levels of satisfaction with child support services compared with those who did not participate in the program.