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Featured Essays
Our Founders profoundly transformed the way people participate in government.
Congress forbade living persons from appearing on paper currency in 1866, after an unpopular Treasury Department official put himself on the five-cent note.
The extravaganza celebrating the nation’s first century was the greatest cultural event of America’s Gilded Age.
At the nation’s pivotal moment — the Civil War — two seventeenth-century vessels kept sailing through the American mind: the Mayflower and the slaver White Lion. Their wakes still cut our waters.
America 250!
America 100: The Great Centennial Fair | Summer 2026, Vol 71, No 3
By Fergus M. BordewichThe extravaganza celebrating the nation’s first century was the greatest cultural event of America’s Gilded Age.
They Turned the World Upside Down | Winter 2026, Vol 71, No 1
By Richard BellAmerican patriots began a conflict that spread around the globe.
The Plight of Massachusetts Loyalists | Spring 2024, Vol 69, No 2
By Larry C. KerpelmanIn “the cradle of the American Revolution,” loyalists to the Crown faced a harsh choice: live with terrible abuse where they were, or flee to friendlier, but alien regions.
An Update on “Save the Glover!” | Spring 2026, Vol 71, No 2
By Nancy L. SchultzEfforts continue to preserve the historic home of General John Glover in Swampscott, Massachusetts, which is still slated for demolition.
Boston's Freedom Trail | July/August 2020, Vol 65, No 4
By Brent GlassSixteen historic sites in Boston remind Americans of the events that led to our nation’s birth, from the Boston Massacre to Breed's Hill and the USS Constitution.
Classic Essays from the Archives
FDR and His Women | March 2003, Summer 2025, Vol 54, No 1
By Ellen FeldmanA 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.
Growing Up Colored | Summer 2012, Summer 2025, 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.
A Few Parchment Pages Two Hundred Years Later | May/June 1987, Summer 2025, Vol 70, No 3
By Richard B. MorrisThe framers of the Constitution were proud of what they had done but might be astonished that their words still carry so much weight. A distinguished scholar tells us how the great charter has survived and flourished.
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