Kevin Baker

Kevin Baker is an author and journalist whose work frequently covers American history, culture, and sports. His three-part, “City of Fire” historical fiction trilogy—Paradise Alley, Dreamland, and Strivers Row—covers New York from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century, and his latest novel, The Big Crowd, is set in the city just after World War II. He is also the author of the history, America, The Story of Us. Residing in New York City, Baker is a contributing editor at Harper’s Magazine, and writes frequently for The New York Times and other periodicals. He is a member of the board of the Society of American Historians.

"WEB ONLY STORIES" BY THIS CONTRIBUTOR

The Winds of Political Change

… And Why You Almost Never Feel Them Coming The Democratic candidate was crushed. An urban, ethnic liberal from the Northeast, he had been caught flatfooted by the waves of vitriolic attacks that smeared his background, his years of dedicated public service, the character of his beloved wife, as…

Helluva Town

Why do they usually avoid holding conventions in New York? This summer marks a sea change in the traditions of American party politics. For the first time the Democratic National Convention will be held in Boston, and the Republican National Convention will be held in that great Babylon, that hole…

Copy Wrong

Internet Piracy and Dickens and Melville “Yes, I read the illegal translation,” a Czech Internet correspondent known as “Hustey” wrote last summer, when the next, eagerly awaited book in J. K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” series—Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix—first appeared in bookstores.…

The Shriek Heard Around The World

When does a single gaffe ruin a campaign? Probably every American with access to a television, a radio, or a computer has heard the notorious howl with which Howard Dean ended his concession speech after the Democratic caucuses in Iowa. Dr. Dean’s weird outburst was immediately labeled a gaffe,…

"Your Brave and Early Fallen Child..."

How should a President honor war dead? Since the beginning of the war in Iraq last year a small tempest has arisen in the media over whether or not George W. Bush should attend the funerals of American servicemen and women killed in the line of duty. As of this writing, Mr. Bush has not done so, a…

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Ambrose, Stephen E.

Stephen E. Ambrose (1936-2002) was a historian and professor who wrote on military history, presidential history, and American expansion and foreign policy. Ambrose has been praised for his biographies of Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon, and for helping to galvanize interest in World War II.

Becker, Elizabeth

Elizabeth Becker is an award-winning journalist and the author of several books. Her history When The War Was Over: Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge won accolades from the Robert F. Kennedy book award, while her recent biography of female conflict journalists You Don’t Belong Here: How Three Women Rewrote the Story of War won the 2022 Sperber Book Prize and Harvard’s Goldsmith Book Prize. She is also the author of America’s Vietnam War: A Narrative History for young adults.

Blight, David W.

David W. Blight is the Class of 1954 Professor of American History and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance & Abolition at Yale University. Recently, Blight has written A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Narratives of Emancipation, and Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, which won the Bancroft Prize, the Abraham Lincoln Prize, and the Frederick Douglass Prize.

Brinkley, Douglas

Douglas Brinkley, a distinguished professor of history at Rice University and Contributing Editor of American Heritage, has written more than 20 books, most recently The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America (Harper 2009) and The Reagan Diaries (HarperCollins 2007). Brinkley earned his B.A from Ohio State University University in 1982, and his Ph.D. from Georgetown University in 1989.