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Featured Essays
A private pilot named Kenneth Arnold kicked off a worldwide craze when he claimed he saw a string of shiny saucers fly past Mount Rainier in 1947.
While Robert Morris is remembered as the "financier of the Revolution," his partner and former boss, Thomas Willing, has been lost to history despite his own contributions to early American business and finance.
Decades before the Ayatollah, even before the shah, early Americans found themselves enchanted with Iranian culture, politics, and history.
By organizing weekly gatherings of political leaders and citizens, she proved democracy works best when rivals see one another as human beings.
America 250!
Revolution Song | Fall 2019 - George Washington Prize Books, Vol 64, No 5
By Russell ShortoThe American War for Independence was part of an international trend -- a new focus on the individual that inspired people to new insights, new proclamations, and new assertions of rights.
Memory and America’s Birthday | Winter 2026, Vol 71, No 1
By Wilfred M. McClayWhile we “know” more and more about the American past, too many of our citizens are ignorant of who we are and where we came from.
For America’s 250th Birthday, Let’s Think Local | Summer 2023, Vol 68, No 4
By Hans ZeigerCommunities around the U.S. hope that the nation's upcoming 250th anniversary will inspire Americans to appreciate the importance of shared experience and preserving history.
Why Is the American Revolution So Important? | Spring 2024, Vol 69, No 2
By Jack D. WarrenOur nation is free because, 250 years ago, brave men and women fought a war to establish the independence of the United States and created a system of government to protect the freedom of its citizens.
The Turning Point in the Revolutionary War | October 1997, Vol 48, No 6
By Richard M. Ketchum
Classic Essays from the Archives
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.
"I Had Prayed to God That This Thing Was Fiction…" | February 1990, Vol 41, No 1
By William WilsonHe didn’t want the job, but felt he should do it. For the first time, the soldier who tracked down the My Lai story for the office of the inspector general in 1969 tells what it was like to do some of this era’s grimmest detective work.
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.
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