health

Behind America's Relationship to Exercise

Natalia Mehlman Petrzela's "Fit Nation" places the growth of a vast private exercise industry in a context heavy on moralizing and idealizing and light on public support for healthy living. 

Why Doesn't the Fitness Industry Respond to Americans' Real Needs for Exercise?

Reporter Amanda Mull links a new book by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela and the work of some outside-the-box fitness influencers to examine the mismatch between how big business sells fitness and how Americans want and need to move their bodies. 

Building a Fitness Culture with Inclusion and Creativity?

by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela

What will it take for the culture of fitness and bodily health to draw in people with disabilities and push out narrow normative ideas of the ideal body? 

Does America Need to Return to Medieval Sleep Habits?

Historian Roger Ekrich describes the medieval biphasic sleep cycle – falling asleep at nightfall, waking at midnight, and sleeping again till dawn – but says it was a response to living conditions, not a natural pattern or preferable to modern sleep habits.

Junk: Mark Bittman’s History of Why We Eat Bad Food

Environmental writer Bill McKibben reviews Mark Bittman's critical look at the rise of industrial food and its human, social and environmental consquences.

Joseph Pilates' Lawyer Helped Turn an Exercise Method into a Fitness Movement

Attorney John Howard Steele was a devoted client of Joseph Pilates' fitness methods, and became responsible for safeguarding the integrity of the method as it grew into a global exercise phenomenon. 

Get in Shape Girl: A Century of Working Out from Home

by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela

The home fitness industry grew by creating and addressing gendered insecurities about masculine strength and feminine attractiveness. 

The World’s Major Military and Economic Powers Find Happiness Elusive

by Lawrence Wittner

Perhaps it’s time for the citizens of the “great powers” to ask themselves if they are truly benefiting from the much-vaunted military and economic strength of their nations.

A proposed EPA rule prioritizes industry profit over people’s lives

by Mona Hanna-Attisha

Limiting access to peer-reviewed science undermines the agency’s effectiveness.

Ibram X. Kendi Writes Personal Essay on Elijah Cummings' Death and Life Expectancy Inequality

by Ibram X. Kendi

Like so many other black men in America, Elijah Cummings died too young.

A Historian Reflects on a Long Life

by Vaughn Davis Bornet

In this personal essay, historian Vaughn Davis Bornet offers his advice on living a long life. 

Most women give birth in hospital – but it’s got more to do with World War II than health

by Carly-Emma Leachman

Prior to the Maternity and Child Welfare Act of 1918, state involvement in the delivery of babies would have been unimaginable.

Children Are At Risk. Why Aren’t We Doing More?

by Molly Ladd-Taylor and Kriste Lindenmeyer

100 years ago Woodrow Wilson launched a federal initiative to improve children’s health and welfare. He called it Children’s Year. It’s time for another.

David Singerman warns the sugar industry has used tactics like Big Tobacco to confuse the public about the dangers of their product

by David Singerman

"If we want to check the power of Big Sugar, we’d be well served to acknowledge the long record — past as well as present — of the industry’s machinations."

Should We Be Bothered that Hillary Clinton Failed to Disclose Her Illness?

by Rick Shenkman

We should.  But history suggests her conduct is common in American politics.