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This special issue looks at the dramatic and momentous events that occurred 250 years ago this month.

“Now the war has begun and no one knows when it will end,” said one minuteman after the fight.

Previously unknown, a map drawn by Lord Percy, the British commander at Lexington, sheds new light on the perilous retreat to Boston 250 years ago this month.

What began as a civil war within the British Empire continued until it became a wider conflict affecting peoples and countries across Europe and North America.

Overshadowed in memory by Lexington and Concord, the Massachusetts town of Menotomy saw the most violent and deadly fighting on April 19, 1775.

Classic Essays from Our Archives

FDR and His Women | March 2003, Vol 54, No 1

By Ellen Feldman

A novelist who has just spent several years studying Eleanor Roosevelt, Lucy Rutherfurd, and Missy LeHand tells a moving story of love: public and private, given and withheld.

fdr and his women

Alice Paul: “I Was Arrested, Of Course…” | February 1974, Vol 70, No 3

By Robert S. Gallagher

An interview with the famed suffragette, Alice Paul

alice paul

Growing Up Colored | Summer 2012, Vol 62, No 2

By Henry Louis Gates Jr.

The noted writer and educator tells of his boyhood in the West Virginia town of Piedmont, where African Americans were second-class citizens, but family pride ran deep.

Henry Louis Gates and family

The Meaning of 1918 | Fall 2018 - World War I Special Issue, Vol 63, No 3

By John Lukacs

A century after the guns fell silent along the Western Front, the work they did there remains of incalculable importance to the age we inhabit and the people we are.

American Heritage Logo

FDR and His Women | March 2003, Vol 70, No 3

By Ellen Feldman

A novelist who has just spent several years studying Eleanor Roosevelt, Lucy Rutherfurd, and Missy LeHand tells a moving story of love: public and private, given and withheld.

fdr and his women

Lincoln As Commander in Chief | Winter 2009, Vol 58, No 6

By James M. McPherson

Even though he had no military training, Lincoln quickly rose to become one of America’s most talented commanders.

lincoln as commander in chief

    Today in History

  • Reagan asks Gorbachev to tear down this wall

    President Ronald Reagan, speaking in front of the Brandenburg Gate section of the Berlin Wall, asks that Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev "Tear down this wall!" Reagan spoke at the 750th anniversary of Berlin, which was united as the German capital in 1989. 

  • George Bush born

    41st President George Herbert Walker Bush in born in Milton, Massachusetts. The son of Connecticut Senator Prescott Bush, he volunteered for the U.S. Navy after Pearl Harbor and became the youngest Naval aviator in American history. Bush later served in the House of Representatives, directed the CIA, and was elected to both the vice presidency and the presidency in the 1980s.

    More »

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