We tend to think of the Confederacy as being united in its battle with the North, but, in fact, all through the war Dixie was torn with dissension. The memory of this has been blurred by the myths that grew up around the Lost Cause in the decades after the war. Eric Foner pulls aside the curtain of nostalgia to reveal a bitter struggle within a struggle.
Rarely has the full story been told about how a famed botanist, a pioneering female journalist, and First Lady Helen Taft battled reluctant bureaucrats to bring Japanese cherry trees to Washington.
Often thought to have been a weak president, Carter was strong-willed in doing what he thought was right, regardless of expediency or the political fallout.
Why have thousands of U.S. banks failed over the years? The answers are in our history and politics.
In his Second Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln embodied leading in a time of polarization, political disagreement, and differing understandings of reality.
Native American peoples and the lands they possessed loomed large for Washington, from his first trips westward as a surveyor to his years as President.