My Brush With History

Nearly a hundred years ago two rival cities fought hard and dirty to win the battle of numbers

Two hundred years ago the United States was a weakling republic prostrate beneath a ruinous national debt. Then Alexander Hamilton worked the miracle of fiscal imagination that made America a healthy young economic giant. How did he do it?

Fashion disposes, the camera exposes. Here’s what was new and exciting for half a century. It didn’t seem quaint then.

When the author moved into a 1905 house on an island near Seattle, he found himself sharing it with the uncommon people who had lived there before him

In February 1970 the editors of American Heritage published “A Wrecker’s Dozen,” by David McCullough. It predicted the destruction of thirteen American buildings and lamented the lack of a widespread conservation ethic in the United States. A while ago G. W.Leaworthy of Titusville, Florida, wrote to us, asking what had happened to the doomed buildings. We decided to find out, and we’re happy to report the news is mostly good.

Dan Patch never lost a race. But that’s not how he made his owner a multi-millionaire. America’s best-loved horse was also perhaps the most shrewdly marketed animal of all time.

Dan Patch never lost a race. But that’s not how he made his owner a multi-millionaire. America’s best-loved horse was also perhaps the most shrewdly marketed animal of all time.