The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads by Maria Popova

Magazines: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
Magazines: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

Robin-Hooding print, vintage infographics, and what organ music has to do with the iPad.

read article

Love Me: The Cross-Cultural Manufacturing of Beauty
Love Me: The Cross-Cultural Manufacturing of Beauty

What Chinese noses and hairy Brazilians have to do with the Moore’s law of breast.

read article

The Enchanted Drawing: Blackton’s Early Animation
The Enchanted Drawing: Blackton’s Early Animation

Lightning sketches, journalistic sycophancy, and what Thomas Edison as to do with Pixar.

read article

Infoviz Education: Animated Visualizations for Kids
Infoviz Education: Animated Visualizations for Kids

Helium, carbon, and what Little Red Riding Hood has to do with malnutrition in Africa.

read article

The Apology Line
The Apology Line

How to exorcise your indiscretions, or what art from the 80’s has to do with modern guilt.

read article

Design Makeovers of Mundane Communication Items
Design Makeovers of Mundane Communication Items

Strangers on a train, pixelated postings, and why ham tastes better in Helvetica.

read article

AnthroPosts: Analog Post-It Found Art, Digitized
AnthroPosts: Analog Post-It Found Art, Digitized

Voyeurism, organic apricots, and indulging the human penchant for patternicity.

read article

World Water Day: 3 Smart Projects to Celebrate It
World Water Day: 3 Smart Projects to Celebrate It

What indie music and your favorite restaurant have to do with Haiti and TED.

read article

A Documentarian Collage of Humanity: 8 Billion Lives
A Documentarian Collage of Humanity: 8 Billion Lives

A celebrity chef, a Buddhist monk and a gay rights activist walk into a bar…

read article

Bruce Gilden on the Other Side of The Camera
Bruce Gilden on the Other Side of The Camera

What Coney Island mobsters have to do with Haiti and the smell of New York City streets.

read article

View Full Site

The Marginalian participates in the Bookshop.org and Amazon.com affiliate programs, designed to provide a means for sites to earn commissions by linking to books. In more human terms, this means that whenever you buy a book from a link here, I receive a small percentage of its price, which goes straight back into my own colossal biblioexpenses. Privacy policy. (TLDR: You're safe — there are no nefarious "third parties" lurking on my watch or shedding crumbs of the "cookies" the rest of the internet uses.)