January 2011

Kevin Baker ’s most recent historical novel is Strivers Row .

Allen Barra writes American Heritage ’s “Screenings” column.

Max Byrd ’s historical novels include Grant, Jackson , and, most recently, Shooting the Sun .

Dale DeGroff has invented more than 400 cocktail recipes; he is the author of The Craft of the Cocktail .

Erica De Mane is the author of Pasta Improvvisata and The Flavors of Southern Italy .

Amy Weaver Dorning is a freelance writer in San Francisco.

Julie M. Fenster is the author of Ether Day and, most recently, with Douglas Brinkley, Parish Priest: Father Michael McGivney and American Catholicism .

Steven Goldman is the author of Forging Genius: The Making of Casey Stengel .

Harold Holzer is the author of 25 books on American history.

David Lander writes American Heritage ’s “Buyable Past” column.

Preservation Saving a Language

According to the Foundation for Endangered Languages, half of the world’s 6,500 languages are “moribund” and likely to disappear. With that, quite a large body of the human experience will be gone forever, since language is not, after all, just communication but a reflection of the mind’s framework.

This year one dwindling language, at least, has been pulled back from the brink. In March the Lakota Sioux language was formally declared safe from extinction, because of the commitment of the Lakota Language Consortium to record the talk of the elders and find ways to pass it on to the youngsters of the tribe.

Which means, as any schoolchild in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, might tell you, “A rainbow has appeared in the sky.”

Military History Wishful War

A Prussian general considering his next war once said, famously, that no plan survives contact with the enemy. That is because war, far from being merely an event, is a process, a dynamic phenomenon; it never obliges those foolish enough to think they can command the unfolding of history. That is also why when statesmen plan war, idées fixes are so dangerous.

 

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Military History Wishful War

Wristwatch MONTANA MASTERPIECE

At the beginning of the twentieth century America produced the majority of the world’s watches. Companies like Hamilton, Elgin, and Illinois manufactured timepieces that set the standard for craftsmanship and reliability.

 

united states postal service2006_6_23

Wristwatch MONTANA MASTERPIECE

At the beginning of the twentieth century America produced the majority of the world’s watches. Companies like Hamilton, Elgin, and Illinois manufactured timepieces that set the standard for craftsmanship and reliability.

Exhibit Titanic Survivors

Nearly 95 years after the sinking of the Titanic , the story of the ill-fated ship continues to enthrall the public like no other saga. Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition feeds that endless curiosity by bringing to the public never-before-seen items recovered from the wreck two and a half miles beneath the North Atlantic.

 

nick merrick © hedrich-blessing/courtesy of fentress bradburn architects2006_6_22

Exhibit Titanic Survivors

Historically it was the addition of bitters to alcoholic beverages in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that defined a new category of mixed drinks called the cocktail. The word first appeared in print in 1806 in a New York periodical called The Balance, and Columbian Repository.

Resort Sneaking a Spa In

Mohonk Mountain House opened in 1870 in one of the most spectacular settings in the Eastern United States, a craggy private mountaintop with views of five states. By 1902 it had grown into one of those monumental country hotels that exist in only a handful of places.

 

courtesy of mohonk mountain house2006_6_17a

Resort Sneaking a Spa In

American Heritage’s editors and contributors survey the historical offerings of recent months, and pick their favorites from a field wide enough to include movies, restaurants, furniture, cocktails, hotels, cookies, wristwatches—and artifacts retrieved from the staterooms of the Titanic.

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