Eight More Octagons

August 2026

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December 1983

15 years ago By admin

Volume

35

Issue

1

The article on octagon houses was most enjoyable and informative, but Alexander Boulton should have roamed a little farther south and viewed Longwood in Natchez.

Stories published from "December 1983"

Letters of a Most Uncommon Common Man

Authored by: David McCullough

Harry Truman’s lifetime correspondence with his adored Bess opens a window on their time

Paintings From a Picture Palace

Authored by: Judith Katten

George Eastman didn’t think the posters the movie companies supplied were good enough for his theater. So he commissioned a local artist to paint better ones.

The Day Before Hollywood

Authored by: Kevin Brownlow

It was a suburb of orange blossoms and gardens, of gracious homes and quiet, dignified lives—until a regrettable class of people moved in.

The Warner Mob

Authored by: Edward Sorel

With the Depression pushing the studio toward bankruptcy, Warner Brothers had to resort to crime—and crime paid so well that the company was able to recruit the toughest guys that ever shot up a sound stage.

Facing Zanuck

Authored by: Joseph Schrank

It was a great life being a contract writer for a major studio during the high noon of the American movie industry—but it could also be a nightmare. A survivor recalls the pleasures and ardors of working at 20th Century-Fox forty years ago.

Master James Is Home For Christmas!

Authored by: John Springer

Some of the best moments in hundreds of movies took place at Christmastime. And the author may have seen every one of them.

John F. Kennedy, Twenty Years Later

Authored by: William E. Leuchtenburg

Was the murdered President one of our best, a man of “vigor, rationality, and noble vision” or was he “an optical illusion,” “an expensively programmed waxwork”? A noted historian examines the mottled evolution of his reputation.

The Ship That Died Of Carelessness

Authored by: Harvey Ardman

The Normandie has been gone since World War II, but many people still remember her as the most beautiful passenger liner ever built. It is the saddest of ironies that she fled her native France to seek safety in New York Harbor.

What Went Wrong With Disney’s Worlds Fair

Authored by: Elting E. Morison

With Epcot, Walt Disney turned his formidable skills to building a city where man and technology could live together in perfect harmony. The result is part prophecy, part world’s fair. Here, America’s leading authority on technological history examines this urban experiment in the light of past world’s fairs, and tells why it fails where they succeeded—and why that matters.

Day By Day in a Colonial Town

Authored by: Robert N. Linscott

How Hadley, Massachusetts, (incorporated 1661) coped with wolves, drunks, Indians, witches, and the laws of God and man.

Eight More Octagons

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