During World War II, Walt Disney Studios produced many propaganda cartoons for the government, starring Donald Duck and other well-known characters. Their subjects ranged from the importance of paying your income tax to farting in Der Fuehrer's...

In 1938, with war looming in Europe, Irving Berlin offered popular singer Kate Smith a new patriotic song to debut on her radio show. It’s forgotten today that in the form she sang it, “God Bless America” wasn’t just a patriotic anthem, it was ...

On the night of Wednesday, June 22, 1938, the whole world was focused on Yankee Stadium. Joe Louis, nicknamed the Brown Bomber, was fighting a rematch with Max Schmeling, called Hitler’s Superman. This was much more than a prizefight. Around th...

No one captured New York City in its noir 1930s and 1940s better than the photographer Arthur Fellig, better known as Weegee. Ceaselessly roaming New York's streets, often at night while his competitors slept, Weegee took thousands and thousand...

When Moe Asch died in 1986, his extraordinarily eclectic Folkways Records had put out 2,186 long-playing records, from Woody Guthrie to Ho Chi Minh, Leadbelly to Langston Hughes, jazz, gospel, Yiddish music, calypso, and instructional records l...