October 1994

What happened when a historian largely indifferent to the subject set out to write the script for Ken Burns’s monumental new documentary

The young German fought for American independence went home and returned as a man of peace.

They padded aboard submarines and proved themselves steadfast in boredom and in battle. During the worst of war, these canine mascots brought their shipmates some of the comfort of home.

The American newspaper: beleaguered by television, hated both for its timidity and its arrogance, biased, provincial, overweening, and still indispensable. A Hearst veteran tells how it got to where it is today, and where it may be headed.

Their unwilling subjects considered the tabloid photographers pushy and boorish. But they felt they were upholding a grand democratic tradition.

The mysterious apotheosis of the newspaper editor