Essays

In 1961, what newly published book was denounced as “subversive and intolerably offensive”? Was it the new American edition of Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller’s sexually explicit autobiographical novel? Nope. Although that book was called filthy, rotten, repulsive, and “an affront to human decency,” the correct answer is Webster’s Third New International Dictionary.

I recently acquired a decommissioned microfilm reader. Machines like it played a central role in both research and secret-agent tasks of the last century. But this one had become an embarrassment. Unlike a computer—even an old one—it was heavy and ungainly. It would not fit into a car, and it could not be carried by two people for more than a few feet. Even moving the thing was an embarrassment. No one wanted it, but no one wanted me to have it around either.

Balloons have always moved minds better than they’ve moved bodies. The upward lift mimics the feeling of ideas drifting into the mind. The haphazard flight path suggests the possibility of being whisked to some faraway world—to Oz, for instance. But today, people are far less likely to have ridden in a balloon than to have read about one in fiction.

Sales of American flag imports pale in comparison to America’s $375 billion trade deficit with China, but these Chinese imports are more politically potent than a line item on the Harmonized Tariff Schedule. Importing flags is not just a matter of economics and global trade. To its critics, it represents an economy, and a country, on the decline.

The practice had evolved from commonplace books, a Renaissance tradition of compiling important and memorable information into bound sheets of paper. Students were encouraged to keep the books during class, and eventually they became a place to store anything and everything their owners found interesting—including the signatures of other classmates.

As the nation’s formerly dry stances on alcohol softened after Prohibition’s repeal in 1933, the whiskey bottle became a powerful symbol and pedagogical tool for the staunchly anti-alcohol advocates of the temperance movement.

Today, the lens represents a struggle between objectivity and relativism. Metaphorically, people look through critical lenses, cultural lenses, political lenses, and historical lenses. We zoom in and out on things, we frame them, we change lenses, we focus. The metaphor highlights how people adopt multiple viewpoints that, in turn, change how they see and think about the world.

It didn’t take long for criminals to realize that the rise of the postal service also created opportunity for exploitation. Crime could suddenly be carried out from afar, with relative anonymity.

Cupholders began as an afterthought, mere circular indents on the inside of the door of the glove compartment, but they have become an absolute necessity and a key feature that shoppers evaluate when purchasing a new car, even for a time supplanting fuel efficiency as a consumer’s most sought-after attribute.

Around the turn of the 20th century, cycling pants were a focus for anxieties and excitements about changing notions of acceptable femininity.

Glass has shaped the world more than any other substance, and in many sneaky ways, it’s the defining material of the human era.

Today, nuclear warheads go unseen and unconsidered, even as nuclear war feels closer than it has in decades.

Bidets were such an integral part of civilized life that even the imprisoned Marie Antoinette was granted a red-trimmed one while awaiting the guillotine. She may have been in a dank, rat-infested cell, but her right to freshen up would not be denied.

The speculum offered a solution to a problem that had plagued gynecology from the beginning: How could a man inspect a woman—“a serious sacrifice in delicacy,” as the French doctor Marc Colombat de L’Isère put it—without violating her modesty?

Turbofan engines offer an audible reminder of the paradox of progress. As much as people may want to experience new things, they have to use old tools and means to do so.

Given that the mere presence of one’s smartphone can reduce cognitive capacity, Yondr offers a way to surf between the waves of a device’s presence and absence. You can hold it, but you can’t use it.

Health providers can review my data from afar, and unauthorized hackers might have access to it, too. But it proved surprisingly difficult to access these medical records myself.

The FFDCA protected the public from unsafe medications, but its limitations quickly became apparent.

As the gratitude trend spreads, the practice can feel compulsory.

The term “working girl” is a double entendre. Used to describe women’s labor outside the home—whether that was sex work or desk work—the turn of phrase also connotes class.