1938 Fifty Years Ago

You probably haven’t seen it, but it’s out by the tracks of the Chicago & North Western

The nation’s first subway system was launched here in 1897.

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

Every one of the Founding Fathers was a historian—a historian who believed that only history could protect us from tyranny and coercion. In their reactions to the long, bloody pageant of the English past, we can see mirrored the framers’ intent.

It was discovered in New Jersey in 1858, was made into full-size copies sent as far away as Edinburgh, and had a violent run-in with Boss Tweed in 1871. Now, after fifty years out of view, the ugly brute can be seen in Philadelphia.

Only one man would have had the wit, the audacity, and the self-confidence to make the case

The early critics of television predicted the new medium would make Americans passively obedient to the powers that be. But they badly underestimated us.

On their weathered stone battlements can
be read the whole history of the three-century
struggle for supremacy in the New World

George Templeton Strong was not a public man, and he is not widely known today. But for forty years he kept the best diary—in both historic and literary terms—ever written by an American.