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March 2023
1min read


Russell Baker on the not-so-new trend of in-your-face humor … Wilfrid Sheed tells how Broadway’s songwriters migrated to Hollywood and, complaining all the while, gave us our greatest popular music … how a pocket watch made possible our mightiest nineteenth-century industry … and, to banish melancholy as the days draw in, more.

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Stories published from "September 1993"

Authored by: Mark Cowick

Exuberant churches of Gothic vaulting and delicate rococo colors united the two worlds of Czech immigrants who landed on Texas soil

Authored by: The Editors

Reversal of Fortune

Authored by: The Editors

No Comps for Curmudgeons

Authored by: The Editors

Birth of the Cool Cop

Authored by: Richard Reeves

Jack Kennedy came into the White House determined to dismantle his Republican predecessor’s rigid, formal staff organization in favor of a spontaneous, flexible, hands-on management style. Thirty years Bill Clinton seems determined to do the same thing. He would do well to remember that what it got JFK was the Bay of Pigs and the Vietnam War.

Authored by: Nicholas Delbanco

THE STRANGE FORGOTTEN LIFE OF AMERICA’S OTHER BEN FRANKLIN, BY AN AUTHOR SO FASCINATED HE’S WRITING A NOVEL ABOUT HIM

Authored by: Phil Patton

BORN IN SLAVERY AND RAISED IN ITS PAINFUL AFTERMATH TO BECOME ONE OF THE MOST POWERFUL AMERICAN ICONS, SHE HAS BEEN MADE TO ENCOMPASS LOVE AND GUILT AND RIDICULE AND WORSHIP —AND STILL SHE LIVES ON

Authored by: The Editors

Aunt Jemima moves to the mantelpiece

Authored by: Cullen Murphy

From the last peacetime maneuvers in North Carolina to the rubble of Tokyo, a young Army officer took it all in and gave it all back in crisp, increasingly confident drawings

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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.

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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.