May 2026

The Other Cannons of Fort Ticonderoga

Fort Ticonderoga is known as “America’s Fort” for good reason. Its capture from the British in May 1775 was the first major American offensive victory in the Revolutionary War. More importantly, the following winter, Col. Henry Knox’s men hauled 60 tons of the fort’s artillery 300 miles to Boston to drive out the enemy. Historians rightly give those cannons some of the credit for America’s independence.

America 50, the First Jubilee

adams and jefferson — *Adams and Jefferson both died on July 4, 1826, fifty years after the nation's founding. Library of Congress*

As July 4, 1826 approached, the country prepared for its national jubilee, the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Americans swelled with pride in their nation and in the stirring manifesto that proclaimed that “all men are created equal” and “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Heroes of the Life Saving Stations

cape lookout rescue — *Postcards from the nineteenth century often featured dramatic photos and illustrations of lifesavers at work.*

Editor’s Note: Charles McGrath is the former editor of the New York Times Book Review and deputy editor of The New Yorker. He has written several books including a history of life saving stations, Shipwreck!: Horseneck Point Lifesaving Station & South Coast Rescuers, in which portions of this essay appeared.

The Radical Duke by Danielle Allen

Radical Duke by Danielle Allen is a deeply revisionist historical work that uncovers Charles Lennox, the Third Duke of Richmond, as an unsung architect of modern political rights. The book reveals how this British aristocrat, alongside a young Thomas Paine, nearly brought the Age of Revolution to Britain.

A Wounded Generation Comes Home

In its duration, geographical reach, and ferocity, World War II was unprecedented, and the effects on those who fought it and their loved ones at home, immeasurable.

The veterans who returned home were not the ones who had left for war. “They are very different now,” wrote the GI cartoonist Bill Mauldin in Up Front, published in June 1945. “Don’t let anybody tell you they aren’t.... Some say the American soldier is the same clean-cut young man who left his home. They are wrong.”

Most returning veterans found it difficult, if not impossible, to get a full night’s sleep. Many were troubled by recurring nightmares and flashbacks. They were irritable, angry, plagued by uncontrollable rages, feelings of social isolation, and fears of places and events that evoked memories of the war, their proximity to death, and the dead left behind. Large numbers sought relief by drinking to excess, as they had during the war and while awaiting repatriation.