Trusted Writing on History, Travel, and American Culture Since 1949
Classic Essays from Our Archives
The future President, who was an aide to Wilson, describes how the Allies bickered at the peace talks after World War I.
Ike's son, who served under Patton, shares his memories of "Ol' Blood and Guts"
The noted writer and educator recalls his boyhood in the West Virginia town of Piedmont.
The first of a three-part series on the Gen. "Vinegar Joe" Stillwell in China, by the Pulitzer Prize winning historian
Of all the Allied leaders, argues FDR's biographer, only Roosevelt saw clearly the shape of the new world order.
The former Secretary of State recalls his time as a "driver" in the Army before World War I.
Douglas Brinkley recalls his friend and colleague McCullough, ‘the dean of our nation’s historians’
Some of the first humans in North America butchered mammoth bones 37,000 years ago in what is now New Mexico.
We nearly lost our first president to the flu. The country could have died, too, by Gillian Brockell
In 1790, George Washington fell severely ill, threatening his life and the young nation he led.
Even after that milestone, millions of people — women and men alike — were still excluded from the vote, as many barriers to suffrage remained.
We can’t assume that all will be fine in the end, but history shows us that times of unrest are opportunities, too.
As the influenza pandemic swept across the United States in 1918 and 1919, masks took a role in political and cultural wars.
Texting exchange by two professors led to Frederick Douglass letter on Emancipation Memorial
While the play's creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda, has delivered Hamilton his long-overdue public acclaim, many other historical figures are overlooked or represented in a less-than-flattering manner throughout the production.
They swept the issue under the rug, and even Thomas Jefferson realized that civil war was inevitable before he died on July 4, 1826. But history could have taken a different direction.
Benjamin Rush was a strange, or a strangely gifted, man, and one of the youngest—at 30—to sign the Declaration of Independence.
Black Americans began to celebrate Juneteenth in honor of when Texas - the last rebel state - officially abolished slavery.
The soul-searching about race prompted by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis has extended into how the history of racial persecution and prejudice is remembered.
How government commissions became alibis for inaction.
Condemnation of black violent resistance, and of black radicalism, is not a new phenomenon.