Oliver Jensen

A railroad man himself, Oliver Jensen is a founder of the Connecticut Valley Railroad, a live-steam operation based in Essex. He is also a founder of this magazine.

Articles by this Author

In Memoriam: Henry Steele Commager, October 1998 | Vol. 49, No. 6

The great storyteller and famed historian lent authority and good advice to our aspiring magazine.

New Views Of An Old War, November 1995 | Vol. 46, No. 7

The Home Front, December 1992 | Vol. 43, No. 8

The American Revolution was in fact a bitter civil war, and a remarkable book offers us perhaps the most intimate picture we have of what it was like for the ordinary people who got caught in its terrible machinery.

Predestinate Grooves, April 1991 | Vol. 42, No. 2

For some people Yale is as inevitable as income tax—and a great deal more fun

Bennington Preserved, November 1990 | Vol. 41, No. 7

Good luck and a determined woman save the lone photographic record of a historic era in Vermont

Trainmaster, December 1988 | Vol. 39, No. 8

When he’s not taking care of a majestic marshaling of toy trains, Graham Claytor gets to play with the real thing.

Windows on Another Time, March 1988 | Vol. 39, No. 2

A man who has spent his life helping transform old photos from agreeable curiosities into a vital historical tool explains their magical power to bring the past into the present.

When Oliver Jensen Was Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean, And Reverent, February/March 1985 | Vol. 36, No. 2

A memoir of Boy Scouting in the youthful days of the movement

The Gettysburg Address In Eisenhowese, December 1985 | Vol. 37, No. 1

Days Of Unconditioned Air, August/September 1984 | Vol. 35, No. 5

War Correspondent, 1864: The Sketchbooks Of James E. Taylor, August/September 1980 | Vol. 31, No. 5

When old James E. Taylor exercised his powers of near-total recall to set down memories of the Shenandoah campaign, he left us a unique record of a very new, very hazardous profession

Working With Bruce Catton, February/March 1979 | Vol. 30, No. 2

The Man Of A Thousand Faces, February/March 1978 | Vol. 29, No. 2

Letter From The Editor, June 1974 | Vol. 25, No. 4

Letter From The Editor, December 1974 | Vol. 26, No. 1

Letter From The Editor, April 1973 | Vol. 24, No. 3

Letter From The Editor, August 1972 | Vol. 23, No. 5

Letter From The Editor, June 1972 | Vol. 23, No. 4

Letter From The Editor, October 1971 | Vol. 22, No. 6

The Fight For The Queen, Or Two Cheers For Congress, April 1971 | Vol. 22, No. 3

1857, December 1969 | Vol. 21, No. 1

Is it really true that the more things change, the more they stay the same? Once upon a time, before the bureaucratic society, before modern war and technology, there was a very different world, and not so long ago. Let us revisit, picking at random, the year

The Shape Of Things Practically Here, June 1966 | Vol. 17, No. 4

Fable for City Planners

Vinland The Good Emerges From The Mists, October 1965 | Vol. 16, No. 6

AMERICAN HERITAGE takes part in announcing an astonishing discovery at Yale—the earliest map ever found that shows any part of America. Traced to a copyist in Basel about 1440 A.D., it shows, long before Columbus, the New World lands discovered by the Norsemen. Authenticated by painstaking scholarly detective work at Yale and the British Museum, it opens the door to tantalizing historical speculations

A Note For Expectant Parents, February 1965 | Vol. 16, No. 2

“We Are All Descended From Grandfathers!”, June 1964 | Vol. 15, No. 4

and… …a glimpse at the grandfathers of the candidates exhibits the wonderful diversity of American life

Side-wheels and Walking Beams, August 1961 | Vol. 12, No. 5

Self-taught, the Bard brothers specialized in the painting of gleaming, accurate little steamboats

Don’t Boil The Calliope Player, Or, Good News For Music Lovers, August 1960 | Vol. 11, No. 5

Tears And Laughter, June 1957 | Vol. 8, No. 4

A Portfolio of Sentimentals and Comics by Currier & Ives

Farewell To Steam, December 1957 | Vol. 9, No. 1

The iron horses that built America are nearly all gathered on the other side of Jordan

H And Non-h, December 1956 | Vol. 8, No. 1

Featured Authors

Acheson, Dean

Dean Acheson (1893-1971) was an attorney and statesman who served as Secretary of State from 1949 to 1953 under President Harry Truman. A key architect of the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan, Acheson stressed the importance of multilateral organizations in the fight against totalitarianism. Prior to his service in the Truman Administration, Acheson clerked for Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, worked at Washington law firm Covington & Burling, and served as Undersecretary of the Treasury for one year under President Franklin Roosevelt.

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.

Bird, Kai

Kai Bird is a historian and Executive Director of Leon Levy Center for Biography at the City University of New York. He is best known for writing about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Vietnam War, US-Middle East relations and biographies of political figures. Bird is the author of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize, and The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames, a New York Times bestseller. His most recent book is The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter.

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.