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March 2023
1min read

Inventing America: On the two hundredth anniversary of the patent system, Oliver Alien surveys how it has, in Abraham Lincoln’s words, “added the fuel of interest to the fire of genius” … an interview with the maker of a superb Civil War documentary that will go on the air in September … visiting colonial Delaware … John Eberson, the architect showman who plundered every historical era to trick out the most exuberant movie theaters ever built … Mark Twain writes home … and, to give flavor to the waning days of summer, more.

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Stories published from "July/august 1990"

Authored by: Jack El-hai

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

Authored by: John Steele Gordon

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?

Authored by: Anne Hollander

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

Authored by: Andrew S. Ward

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

Authored by: Samuel Sifton

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.

Authored by: D. R. Martin

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.

Authored by: D. R. Martin

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.

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