September was the cruelest month. The muddy water that filled our office nearly dealt a fatal blow to American Heritage. As we reported in the last issue, we lost hundreds of books, magazines, research files, prints and photographs, furniture, equipment, legal and accounting records, etc.
Editor's Note: Bruce Watson is a historian, author of seven books, and contributing editor of American Heritage. He regularly publishes essays on his delightful website, The Attic.
Early in the 1960s, John Rice Irwin dropped in on an auction in his native Tennessee. There, he saw the past being sold to the highest bidder. Kitchen tools went for a song. Rusty farm shovels and hoes went unnoticed. Meanwhile, Irwin knew, thousands of pinewood mountain cabins from places like Nickelville and Clinchport and Poor Valley were sinking into the earth. As TV and interstates invaded these parts, a way of life was vanishing.
Editor's Note: Bruce Watson is a historian, author of seven books, and Contributing Editor of American Heritage. He regularly publishes essays on his delightful website, The Attic.
Comedians yammer on and on, but humorists are a somber bunch. Though funny in print, their party personas tend to brooding. Their lives are often a mess. You don’t have to be Freud to see that sorrow is the soul of wit. But then, meet Robert Benchley.
During the Depression, as one of America’s most beloved humorists, Benchley was asked for a brief bio. Here is his response:
Editor’s Note: Gil Klein is the author of Lafayette Square: Assassination, Protest & Murder at the White House. A former reporter for the Tampa Tribune and Media General New Service, he is now Resident Director of the University of Oklahoma’s Washington Journalism Program.
Editor’s Note: Fergus M. Bordewich has written eight books of history. Portions of this essay were adapted by the author from his most recent book, Congress at War: How Republican Reformers Fought the Civil War, Defied Lincoln, Ended Slavery, and Remade America.
On April 12, 1864, a hard-riding Confederate force of between 1500 and 2000 cavalry under General Nathan Bedford Forrest, a wealthy prewar slave trader and the South’s most enterprising and skillful cavalry commander, surprised the garrison of Fort Pillow, 40 miles north of Memphis.