How an unknown grad student, mother of five, became a historian, an inspiration, a meme.
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Weaving wonder out of darkness, Mary Oliver became America’s favorite poet.
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America was going modern — skyscrapers, biplanes, Model T’s. Why not poetry? Harriet Monroe asked.
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Think April is “the cruelest month?” E.E. Cummings will cure your despair.
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world
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For a full year, poet Ross Gay focused on things that delight him. The result: The Book of Delights. You need this now.
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Martin Gardner was interested in everything and made everything interesting.
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While the nation watched, Barbara Jordan stepped out of the Jim Crow past to defend democracy.
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Photography was anything but instant before Edwin Land made a magic camera called Polaroid.
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Like the music it celebrated, the iconic photo of jazz greats was mostly improv.
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Through the worst seasons of TV’s “wasteland,” Rod Serling brought intelligence and irony to “the boob tube.”
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The deep ocean remained a mystery until William Beebe and his Bathysphere found new depths.
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When a nine-year-old girl asked about trading cards, her mother and aunt got busy. And “Supersisters” went viral.
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In 1833, when fire and brimstone lit the sky, most Americans trembled. But a few turned to “the lights of science.”
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On the eve of 1880, Thomas Edison threw a New Year’s party unlike any before or since. Let there be light!
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Truman Capote’s Christmas tale has been told and re-told but how much was memory and how much was fiction?
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