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Coming Up In American Heritage

March 2023
1min read


The day the world changed

The bombs that fell on Pearl Harbor did more than destroy America’s battleship navy; they put an end to an era of American history and blew open a new one. Richard Ketchum’s fascinating survey of what happened on December 7, 1941, begins not in Hawaii but in a sleeping Washington, D.C., and follows the long day as it unfolded for a score of Americans whose lives it would forever change, from college students to President Roosevelt.

The wimp factor

A year ago Americans were watching a presidential campaign in which two perfectly sturdy contenders—one a war hero—had to go through increasingly grotesque postures to show they were tough as hell. When did Americans get the idea that their Chief Executive had to be as macho as John Wayne? Bruce Curtis goes to the historical record and finds that the posturing began at least a century before the Duke was born.

A Connecticut Yankee in hell

Justin Kaplan looks at the book that many regard as Mark Twain’s lighthearted historical fable and finds it a tormented indictment of the Industrial Revolution in particular and the human race in general.

Plus…

Humble tintypes provide an eloquent portrait of working America a century ago … the latest in our series on American house styles: the Gothic Revival … and, in keeping with the bounty of the Thanksgiving season, more.

We hope you enjoy our work.

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Stories published from "September/October 1989"

Authored by: Avis Berman

American art was hardly more than a cultural curiosity in the early years of this century. Now it is among the world’s most influential, and much of the credit belongs to a self-made woman named Juliana Force.

Authored by: Robert Bendiner

A lifelong baseball fan recalls his early days and explains the rewards of abject loyalty

Authored by: The Editors

A History of America’s Civil Rights Movement

Authored by: The Editors

The Development of Jazz, 1930–1945

Authored by: Geoffrey C. Ward

Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt’s honeymoon was a lavish grand tour through a sunny, hospitable Europe. It was also filled with signs of the mutual bafflement that would one day embitter their marriage.

Authored by: Robert L. O’connell

The urge to move documents as fast as possible has always been a national pre-occupation, because it has always been a necessity. Fax and Federal Express are just the latest among many innovations for getting the message across.

Featured Articles

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In his Second Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln embodied leading in a time of polarization, political disagreement, and differing understandings of reality.

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A hundred years ago, America was rocked by riots, repression, and racial violence.

During Pres. Washington’s first term, an epidemic killed one tenth of all the inhabitants of Philadelphia, then the capital of the young United States.

Now a popular state park, the unassuming geological feature along the Illinois River has served as the site of centuries of human habitation and discovery.  

The recent discovery of the hull of the battleship Nevada recalls her dramatic action at Pearl Harbor and ultimate revenge on D-Day as the first ship to fire on the Nazis.

Our research reveals that 19 artworks in the U.S. Capitol honor men who were Confederate officers or officials. What many of them said, and did, is truly despicable.

Here is probably the most wide-ranging look at Presidential misbehavior ever published in a magazine.

When Germany unleashed its blitzkreig in 1939, the U.S. Army was only the 17th largest in the world. FDR and Marshall had to build a fighting force able to take on the Nazis, against the wishes of many in Congress.