Last month we received the news that Dolly Parton had died. She was 80 years old, born in 1946—the year traditionally used to mark the beginning of the Baby Boom. She had traveled an almost unimagi…

How Dolly Parton Became One of Gay America’s Most Beloved and Staunchest Allies Dolly Parton became an icon to America’s gay population before many mainstream country stars would even acknowledge t…

When they were young our granddaughter Audrey and our grandson Owen—who, like Dolly Parton, was born in Tennessee—each received a book every month from Dolly’s Imagination Library. The books …

This is the 1st of 4 articles in tribute to the Queen of Country, who died last month at the age of 80. Dolly Parton left behind thousands of songs, but also something less easily counted: lyrics t…

If you’ve found your way here, chances are you’re trying to make sense of America. Well so am I. For years I’ve been fascinated by the stories we tell ourselves as a nation—not ju…

For Baby Boomers born in the years immediately following World War II, the Cold War was not just a chapter in a history book. It was the atmosphere they breathed. It shaped their fears, their polit…

On August 6 and August 9, 1945, the world changed forever. In the closing days of World War II, the United States dropped two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In a mat…

There were several media that helped drive the success, first of rock & roll and then later the music that eventually came to be known as classic rock. Here is the story of how one such medium …

Since its debut in 1968, science-fiction enthusiasts and fans of great films have been debating the meaning of the epic movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, a joint project from renowned movie director Sta…

The image of a college campus, with open lawns, brick buildings, and students moving between classes, has long stood for something larger in the American imagination: possibility, dissent, and the …

Image courtesy of my AI HAL 2025 By David Lee Price There are moments in history when fiction stops being escapism and starts looking uncomfortably like a mirror. For millions of Americans, politic…

Talking ’Bout My Generation: The Baby Boom Experience — Reimagined, Refocused, Ready What happens when the first true pop culture generation takes a long look back not just at what it consumed, but…

Talking ’Bout My Generation: The Baby Boom Experience — Reimagined, Refocused, Ready What happens when the first true pop culture generation takes a long look back not just at what it consumed, but…

In a brief call with Barak Ravid of Axios today, President Donald J.

YouTube video by BruceSpringsteenVEVO

The Super Bowl as Cultural Text How Commercials Became Mirrors of American Life It has become America’s game. It is America’s super-most undeclared holiday. It’s Super Bowl Sunday…

The Reckoning: What the Panthers Ultimately Teach Us About Democracy Editor’s Note This final chapter does not ask whether the Black Panthers were right or wrong.History has already complicated tha…

The Break: How Movements Are Fractured From the Inside Editor’s Note Parts 2 and 3 traced the external pressures placed on protest movements—state repression and media framing.Part 4 turn…

The Frame: How Media Turns Protest Into Threat Editor’s Note If Part 2 examined the state’s response to effective protest, Part 3 examines the partner that makes that response palatable. Repression…

The Playbook: How the State Responds When Protest Becomes Power Editor’s Note Part 1 established why the Black Panther Party emerged and what it built. Part 2 examines the response—and why, more th…

From Oakland to Philadelphia: Why the Panther Legacy Still Triggers the State EDITOR’S NOTE: This series is not about nostalgia, nor about endorsing any modern group by name. It is about hist…

Most protest songs argue. Some inspire. A few endure. Ohio by Neil Young endures because it does something rarer and more dangerous: it accuses. Written in days by Neil Young af…

From Kent State to Minneapolis On May 4, 1970, rifle fire cracked across a college green in Ohio. Four students fell. Nine more were wounded. The images—young bodies on the ground, shock frozen on …

A final reflection and call to action We have spent the last two days remembering Martin Luther King Jr.—not as a monument, not as a slogan, but as a moral voice still speaking into our presen…

A spoken-word address to the American people, imagined in the moral voice of Martin Luther King Jr. My fellow Americans— I come to you todaynot from the mountaintop,but from the valley. The va…

December 7, 1941.

We were warned by Washington, Lincoln and others. Now we must oppose this authoritarian regime, firmly voice our commitment to the Constitution and rule of law—and assert what it means to be American.