Trusted Writing on History, Travel, and American Culture Since 1949
Michigan
In 1673, a Jesuit missionary, a fur trader, and a small group of canoe men traveled two thousand miles from what is now upper Michigan down to Arkansas and back.
A century ago the Soo canal was an insignificant ditch in a remote northern wilderness. Today it serves as the busiest industrial highway on earth.
Bill Mitchell’s imaginings brought you the cars of Detroit’s ultimate classic era
THEY SIT LIKE RUINED VILLAS IN THE distant reaches of mall parking lots, in inner-city neighborhoods and backcountry towns, dressed no longer in bright colors but in gray patches and orange primer, the last Chevelles and Biscaynes, GTOs an Read more >>
When copper-country miners went on strike, the owners brought thugs from the slums of New York to northern Michigan. The struggle led to an event that killed a city.
On the surface, there was hardly a more unlikely spot for turn-of-the-century prosperity than the isolated community of Calumet. Read more >>
The great sit-down strike that transformed American industry
At General Motors’ Flint, Michigan, Fisher Body Number One, the largest auto-body factory in the world, it was early evening of a chill winter day. Read more >>
What happened when the richest man in America decided to collect one of everything
The whole curious enterprise puzzled Americans in the 1920’s. Read more >>
THE WAY I SEE IT
I was talking with my friend Leonard about the matter of keeping a house warm in the depths of a northern Michigan winter, and he asked if I knew what the most beautiful sound in the world was. Read more >>
An excerpt from a new bicentennial history of his native state
"With half the western world at stake, See Perry on the middle lake.” —Nineteenth-century ballad
In the late summer of 1812 a Great Lakes merchant captain named Daniel Dobbins arrived in Washington. Read more >>
A FAMOUS HISTORIAN RECALLS THE COUNTRY WHERE HE GREW UP
We lived in Indian summer and mistook it for spring. Winter lay ahead just when we thought June was on the way. The school, the town, and the people connected with both were coming to an end that seemed to be a beginning. Read more >>
THIRD OF FOUR INSTALLMENTS A FAMOUS HISTORIAN RECALLS THE COUNTRY WHERE HE GREW UP
This is how it was in the old days. A family that wanted to go from here to there went by railroad train because there was no other way to do it. Read more >>
SECOND OF FOUR INSTALLMENTS
A FAMOUS HISTORIAN RECALLS THE COUNTRY WHERE HE GREW UP
According to the Bible, a city that is set upon a hill cannot be hid. Read more >>
Henry Ford bought a $75,000 Stradivarius, learned to play “Turkey in the Straw,” and tried to teach all those Model T riders how to do-si-do like Grandpa
For four decades Henry Ford was one of America’s most original crusaders. Read more >>
A FAMOUS HISTORIAN RECALLS THE COUNTRY WHERE HE GREW UP
First there was the ice; two miles high, hundreds of miles wide, and many centuries deep. It came down from the darkness at the top of the world, and it hung down over the eaves, and our Michigan country lay along the line of the overhang. Read more >>
The wrecker’s ball swings in every city in the land, and memorable edifices of all kinds are coming down at a steady clip.
There are places on this earth, in Europe particularly, where conservation is taken to mean the preservation of the notable works of man as well as nature. Read more >>