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Featured Essays
Some writers ignore a mountain of evidence contrary to their theories about the telephone's development.
New evidence finally settles the 150-year-old debate as to whether Alexander Graham Bell or Elisha Gray first invented the telephone.
Museums and historic sites across the Southeast help us better understand Andrew Jackson, who helped define American democracy but also championed the brutal treatment of indigenous peoples.
America 250!
The Turning Point in the Revolutionary War | October 1997, Vol 48, No 6
By Richard M. Ketchum
The Shots Heard Round the World | Spring 2025, Vol 70, No 2
By John FerlingWhat 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.
“What, to the American Slave, Is the Fourth of July?” | Summer 2019, Vol 64, No 3
By Bruce WatsonIn what many consider the greatest anti-slavery oration ever given, Frederick Douglass called for “the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.”
Did Hurricanes Save America? | September 2020, Vol 65, No 5
By Eric Jay DolinThe outcome of the American Revolution may have been affected by catastrophic storms in the deadliest hurricane season in recorded history.
Drama at the Old North Bridge | Spring 2025, Vol 70, No 2
By Rick Atkinson“Now the war has begun and no one knows when it will end,” said one minuteman after the fight.
Classic Essays from the Archives
Herbert Hoover Describes the Ordeal of Woodrow Wilson | June 1958, Vol 9, No 4
By Herbert HooverThe great tragedy of the twenty-eighth President as witnessed by his loyal lieutenant, the thirty-first.
The Slave Who Sued for Freedom | March 1990, Vol 41, No 2
By Jon SwanWhile the American Revolution was still being fought, Mum Bett declared that the new nation’s principle of liberty must extend to her, too. It took 80 years and a far-more-terrible war to confirm the rights that she had demanded.
"The Sparck of Rebellion" | Winter 2010, Summer 2025, Vol 59, No 4
By Douglas BrinkleyBadly disguised as Indians, a rowdy group of patriotic vandals kicked a revolution into motion.
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