Trusted Writing on History, Travel, and American Culture Since 1949
Thomas Paine
The words of Thomas Paine changed the course of history, and are still relevant as Ukrainians fight for the rights he articulated.
Thomas Paine's Common Sense helped Americans "decide upon the propriety of separation,” as George Washington said.
In May 1775 the Reverend Jonathan Boucher, rowing across the Potomac, met George Washington rowing in the other direction on his way to the Continental Congress. The two conversed briefly on the fate of the colonies, and Boucher asked Washington if he supported independence. Read more >>
In the teeth of near defeat, Gen. George Washington pulled out miraculous mid-winter victories
In December 18, 1776, the American Revolution was near collapse. The commander in chief of its forces, George Washington, warned his brothers in Virginia that "I think the game is pretty near up," unless a new army were instantly recruited, which was not happening. Read more >>
‘The ingenious Captain Peale” sired a dynasty of painters and started America’s first great museum.
He was a capitalist. He was an urban reformer. He was a country boy. He was “Comrade Jesus,” a hardworking socialist. He was the world’s first ad man. For a century and a half, novelists have been trying to recapture the “real” Jesus.
The two most popular novels in nineteenth-century America were Lew Wallace’s Ben Hur (1880) and Charles Sheldon’s In His Steps (1896). Read more >>
You Asked for It
When American Heritage suggested last year that I put together the article that became “101 Things Every College Graduate Should Know about American History,” I accepted the assignment eagerly. Read more >>
Walden is here, of course; but so too is Fanny Farmer’s first cookbook
America is not a nation of readers, yet books have had a deep and lasting effect on its national life. Read more >>
WHERE DID IT GO?
As we commemorate the anniversary of the founding of our nation we are conscious of a paradox: we have almost miraculously maintained the continuity of those institutions which the Founding Fathers created, but in large measure we have betrayed the principles Read more >>
Vain, snobbish, distinctly upper-class in his libertine social habits, Gouverneur Morris nevertheless saw himself justifiably as "A Representative of America"
Of all the remarkable men who forgathered in Philadelphia in the spring of 1787 to revise the Articles of Confederation, and perhaps to do even more, Gouverneur Morris was certainly the most talkative. Read more >>
The Most Uncommon Pamphlet of the Revolution
Common Sense was a bestseller and turned the tide of public feeling toward independence, but for its author fame was followed by ingratitude.
The whole history of America affords examples of men who fitted precisely the needs of a particular moment, only to be cast aside, forgotten or traduced when the tide of events they created or manipulated waned and time passed them by. Read more >>
About to die at the untimely age of forty-four in 1883, Dr. George Miller Beard, a Connecticut physician and pioneer in neurology, remarked: “I should like to record the thoughts of a dying man for the benefit of science, but it is impossible.” And with those words, Dr. Read more >>
Time is taking its toll of the romantic covered bridge, where once you could exchange gossip, argue politics, or court your lady fair.