Smithsonian Magazine

“This article really opened my eyes on how ancient cultures blended.” Shoring Up the Shore Once again, man is focused on attempting to hold Mother Nature at bay (no pun intended) by spending billions of dollars to protect barrier islands from hurricanes and storm surge along the Texas Gulf Coast. How ironic that the article (“The Next Big Wave,” July/August 2024) just happened to coincide with the arrival of Hurricane Beryl. Perhaps a wake-up call? It remains to be seen if the expensive exercise by the state of Texas and the Army Corps of Engineers was worth it or whether Mother Nature has the last laugh. I know who I’m betting on. Mark B. Atwood | Nazareth, Pennsylvania A Wild Legacy I read with interest Joshua Hammer’s account (“The Strange Afterlife of Pablo Escobar’s Hippos,”…

DURING THE presidential election of 1992—when Bill Clinton ran against incumbent George H.W. Bush—I took my youngest daughter, Sarah, with me to the polling station. She was just 5 years old, and she quickly disappeared into someone else’s booth. When I asked her what she was doing in there, she answered: “I was making sure they voted correctly.” Sarah is all grown up now—old enough to vote herself and respect voting privacy laws—but anyone who knows her would recognize that same conviction. Despite our best attempts at privacy at polling sites, perhaps the only way to make sure there are no precocious little guests popping into your voting booth is to cast a mail-in ballot. However, privacy is not the only reason to consider this option. During our last presidential election, Covid-19’s spread…

Meet the magazine’s journalists & hear how they discover the forces behind the biggest issues of our time Art, biography, history, & identity collide in this podcast with National Portrait Gallery Director Kim Sajet Telling stories that literally defy gravity—aviation history, cutting-edge spaceflight & everything in between From dinosaurs to dining rooms, this podcast connects big ideas to the people who have them A journey through stories of Black female genius in popular music featuring Ella, Tina, and Beyoncé is a proud partner & distributor of these Smithsonian podcasts Available at si.edu/podcasts or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts…

I FEEL MYSELF UNEQUAL to this business” confessed John Adams, of the “grand scene open before me—a Congress.” In the fall of 1774, Adams and 55 other delegates journeyed all manner of distances by foot, horseback and carriage to Philadelphia for the First Continental Congress. Before now, few of “the wisest men upon the continent,” as Adams described the delegates in his diary, had ever left their colonies or collaborated with one another, but there was power in numbers—or, at least, they had seen there was weakness without them. In March 1774, British Parliament punished the Massachusetts colony for the Boston Tea Party with the Coercive Acts, which closed the Port of Boston, reduced Massachusetts’ powers of self-government, provided for quartering troops in the Colonies and permitted royal officers accused of…

THE JUDGE William Murray served as lord chief justice—head of the judiciary of England and Wales—from 1756 to 1788, becoming one of Britain’s most influential lawmen. He advocated heavily for England’s control over the American Colonies, often in uncompromising terms: “If you do not kill them, they will kill you.” John Quincy Adams would later deem Murray “more responsible for the Revolution than any other man,” and Thomas Jefferson called the judge’s decisions full of “sly poison.” Still, Murray’s philosophy of jurisprudence inspired many fundamental principles of U.S. commercial law: He’s been cited in over 300 U.S. Supreme Court opinions. THE CONCILIATOR William Legge, the Second Earl of Dartmouth, twice led the House of Lords’ Board of Trade and Foreign Plantations before becoming Britain’s secretary of state for the Colonies. Early on, he…

IN THE 18TH CENTURY, a singular religious society arrived on American shores from England. Its members were known as Shakers, from their tendency to “shake” off evil during fervent worship. The Shakers lived in communal households devoid of decor. But as a new exhibition of ornate drawings illustrates, they weren’t bound by simplicity. Shaker women made and exchanged—but never displayed—these “token” drawings, which often depicted natural motifs like a “Tree of Life” or flowery garden. The art conveys a “creative vibrancy” that changes perceptions of Shaker culture, says Emelie Gevalt, the coordinating curator of “Anything but Simple: Gift Drawings and the Shaker Aesthetic” at the American Folk Art Museum in New York. “Whatever sense we might have of Shaker life as austere and strictly disciplined, these images speak to the…