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Books
We can better understand how Washington thought by piecing together clues that have remained hidden in the books he once owned.
Kevin Baker ’s most recent historical novel is Strivers Row .
Allen Barra writes American Heritage ’s “Screenings” column. Read more >>
Cocktails Bitters are back
Cocktails Bitters are back
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. Read more >>
To begin with, the Presidential libraries do not look like what they are. Each one is, in fact, a miniature Office of Public Records. Read more >>
When he offered Congress his library, his foes charged that it was full of books which “never ought to be read” and probably ought to be burned
When, on the night of August 24–25, 1814, General Robert Ross burned Washington, most though not all, of the infant congressional library went up in flames. Patrick Magruder, who doubled as clerk of the House and librarian, had betaken himself to Virginia Springs, and the convulsive efforts of his assistants to save the library foundered on the lack of wagons. A subsequent congressional investigation concluded somewhat illogically that the hapless Magruder should have foreseen this embarrassment and provided for it, and accepted his resignation.
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