February 2026

Every so often, we poll our readers to find out which were their favorite essays from the year before. The results are always fascinating, and often unexpected.

Below are the favorite American Heritage essays of 2025 according to our latest survey. Take a look at the list, and feel free to email us with your own nominations or suggestions at editor@americanheritage.com.

--The Editors

1. The Shots Heard Round the World

By John Ferling, Spring 2025, Volume 70, Issue 2

What 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.

Editor's Note: David O. Stewart has published five books of American history and is a frequent contributor to American Heritage. The following essay will appear in his new book coming out in May, The Democracy We Must Keep: Seven Founders, Nine Documents, and the Ideas that Shaped America.

In the opening months of the Revolutionary War, America’s ragtag militias and jerry-built Continental Army squared off against the most professional army then on the planet. The battles of Lexington and Concord demonstrated that Americans would fight, and fight hard.

Two months later, they won respect at Boston’s battle of Bunker Hill, yielding the battlefield but inflicting punishing casualties that staggered British officers. Thirteen thousand New Englanders raced to surround Boston and seal off the enemy forces from the rest of North America.  The Royal Navy would be forced to evacuate those troops.

Editor’s Note: Edward J. Larson is s professor at Pepperdine University and the University of Georgia, where he has taught for twenty years. His many books include Summer for the Gods, winner of the 1998 Pulitzer Prize in History, and most recently Declaring Independence: Why 1776 Matters, in which portions of this essay appeared.