Holmes’s Obsession

The urge to create literature was as strong in the mid-1800s as it is today, but rejections were brutal and the pay was even worse

Did the Indians have a special, almost noble, affinity with the American environment—or were they despoilers of it? Two historians of the environment explain the profound clash of cultures between Indians and whites that has made each group almost incomprehensible to the other.

Connoisseurs have long regarded him as the master of cold-turkey peddling. He’s been at it for eighty years.

The vast jumble of objects that once brought solace to an eccentric heiress has become a great museum of the middle class

A trackside album of celebrities from the days when the world went by train

The opium trade is remembered as a British outrage: English merchants, protected by English bayonets, turning China into a nation of addicts. But Americans got rich from this traffic—among them, a young man named Warren Delano. He didn’t talk about it afterward, of course. And neither did his grandson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

These World War II airmen had one of the most dangerous missions of all, piloting unarmed cargo planes over the Hump—the high and treacherous Himalayas

Some of our finest public buildings were designed by a tormented young English architect whom the world has forgotten

Forget football, basketball, and all the other sports that are artificially regulated by the clock. Only baseball can truly reveal our national character. Only baseball can light our path to the future.

The crisis swept over France and Germany and Britain alike—and they all nearly foundered. Now more than ever, it is important to remember it didn’t just happen here.