The Pulse Of City Life

From wilderness to foremost city of the colonies, and then to cosmopolitan capital of the Republic—this was Philadelphia’s first century

None of its defenders survived, so that legends obscure their fate. But the facts do no dishonor to these beleaguered men, sworn to fight on until the end “at the peril of our lives, liberties and fortunes”

Dauntless John Holland not only perfected the undersea boat but fought to get it accepted. Both achievements brought him only grief

To a Russia in revolution, America sent rival groups of amateur diplomats. The calamitous results of their indecision still afflict us

Or, a dogged attempt to assemble a most remarkable company—the famous survivors of the battle lost by a British general on the Monongahela. Everybody who was anybody was there, from George Washington to Daniel Boone. Everybody, that is, but B. Gratz Brown

Proud and independent, the farm girls of New England helped build an industrial Eden, but its paternalistic innocence was not to last

William Cary, traveling west on the Missouri, recorded the life and landscape of a rapidly vanishing frontier

Everything interested Louis Agassiz, from tiny fish to gigantic glaciers, and he transmitted his enthusiasm to the students of a whole generation

Early in his military career, the apostle of air power blazed a trail through the wilderness, forging the last link in a telegraph line to the edge of the Bering Sea