December 1982
Features
Here is the federal government’s own picture history of our times—and it tells us more than you might think
He loved women so much he painted wings on them. After years of neglect, he is now being appreciated.
But was Louis Moreau Gottschalk America’s first musical genius or simply the purveyor of sentimental claptrap?
From Germany and Switzerland, farmer-potters transplanted their skills to Pennsylvania and produced a distinctive ceramic found nowhere else in America
How the colossus of the “social expression industry” always manages to say it better than you do
In the thirties the WPA decided it would be good to know just what the insides of Victorian homes, offices, and stores had looked like. The artist-historian Perkins Harnly created a sumptuous record.
How the mistress of the plantation became a slave
The most influential economist in the United States talks about prudence, productivity, and the pursuit of liquidity in the light of the past
One man measures his life-span against the length of recorded history and finds tidings of comfort and hope
Conjectural or speculative history can be a silly game, as in “What if the Roman legions had machine guns?” But this historian argues that to enlarge our knowledge and understanding it sometimes makes very good sense to ask …
A soldier remembers the freezing, fearful retreat down the Korean Peninsula after the Chinese armies smashed across the border
Departments
AMERICAN CHARACTERS:
CORRESPONDENCE
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR:
NOW AND THEN
POSTSCRIPTS
READERS’ ALBUM:
THE TIME MACHINE
American Heritage is proud to host the
National Portal to
Historic Collections
Recently added:
- American Revolution Center
- National Museum of Civil War Medicine
- National Museum of the U.S. Navy
- Manassas National Battlefield
- Maryland State House
In association with the
American Association for State and Local History
Why do we need a national nonprofit membership society for American history?
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“Save America’s Treasures” has been totally eliminated—the largest Federal program supporting preservation of such treasures as the original Star Spangled Banner and George Washington’s tent.
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65% of Americans don’t know what happened at the Constitutional Convention, according to a recent survey by Newsweek.
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The “Teaching American History” grants—the largest Federal program supporting history education—have been completely eliminated.
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Visits to the Top 20 Civil War battlefields have dropped in half from 1970 to 2009 according to official National Park Service statistics.
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40% of Americans can’t identify whom we fought in World War II, according to a recent survey by Newsweek.
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A quarter of Americans believe Congress shares power over U.S. foreign policy with the United Nations, according to a recent Annenberg survey.
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“There is little that is more important for an American citizen to know than the history and traditions of his country,” John F. Kennedy wrote in American Heritage.
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The “We the People Program,” which touched some 30 million students and 90,000 teachers over 25 years, has been completely eliminated.
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Two-thirds of Americans could not correctly name Yorktown as the last major military action of the American Revolution, according to a recent national Gallup survey.
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The National Heritage Areas and Scenic Byways program, the only major Federal program encouraging visits to historic places, has been completely eliminated in Congressional committee.
