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A longtime expert on blues music recounts what it was like to work with one of America's greatest musicians.
Editor's Note: William Ferris is the former Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities and founding director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture.
The sitcom “All in the Family” debuted 50 years ago this month, and had a lasting effect on television and American culture.
Editor’s Note: Jim Cullen holds masters and PhD degrees in American Studies from Brown and the author of over a dozen books.
Newsboys in antebellum New York and elsewhere were embroiled in all the major conflicts of their day, becoming mixed metaphors for enterprise and annoyance.
Editor's Note: Vincent DiGirolamo is a professor of history at Baruch College in New York City.
Roast pig, boiled rockfish, and apple pie were among the dishes George and Martha enjoyed during the holiday in 1797. Here are some actual recipes.
Masks and "social distancing" are nothing new. Over the centuries, Americans have suffered terribly from smallpox, yellow fever, cholera, typhoid, pellagra, influenza, polio, and other pandemics.
A menu for a 1779 New England Thanksgiving included dishes from turkey and venison to pumpkin pie.
Facebook and Google have repeatedly blocked American Heritage's content because they can't tell the difference between Russian trolls and a trusted, award-winning magazine.
Congress should investigate the widespread censorship of quality journalism by Facebook and Google, and their discriminatory practices against respected legacy publications.
People who know nothing else about Chicago’s Great Conflagration have heard of Mrs. O’Leary and her famous cow. But the disaster's real origins are more complicated.
Editor’s Note: On October 8, 1871, the Great Chicago Fire destroyed close to three square miles of the city, took an estimated 300 lives, and left some 90,000 homeless.
Some New England graveyards show evidence of rituals performed to ward off bloodthirsty murderers.
Abraham Lincoln learned much of what made him a great president — honesty, sincerity, toughness, and humility — from his early reading and from studying the lives of Washington and Franklin.
Editor's Note: David S. Reynolds is a Distinguished Professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and the author of 15 books including first-rate biographies of Walt Whitman, John Brown, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. His latest is
Fifty years ago this month, Loretta Lynn released a song inspired by her childhood in Butcher Holler, Kentucky. Now she is the undisputed “Queen of Country Music."
Editor's Note: Holley Snaith is a historical researcher who has worked at the Nixon Foundation and Eleanor Roosevelt Center. Photos courtesy of Loretta Lynn Enterprises, unless otherwise noted.
Harry Truman's wife Bess was not amused when she saw the photo of her husband playing the piano while Lauren Bacall's legs dangled in front.
Editor's Note: Veteran reporter and journalism professor Gil Klein is author of Tales from the National Press Clu
Every country has mail, but only in America is the daily mail part-ritual, part-Constitutional mandate.
Supai, Arizona is the
Denigrated as "crude," "illiterate," "self-centered," and "slovenly," Mary Washington had the singular destiny to have a son whose potential for being idealized seems to have been even greater than that for motherhood.
Excerpted from the George Washington Book Prize finalist The Widow Washington: The Life of Mary Washington, by Martha Saxton (Farrar, Straus and Giroux).
Following Washington's death in 1799, cultural and intellectual agents in early America began to transform the first president into a national symbol through books, poems, and artwork.
Excerpted from the George Washington Book Prize finalist The Property of the
The force behind the early education and social movements—American curiosity—still lives on today.
Chautauquas took plac
I recently read Sylvia Lovegren's piece about the history of barbecue, published in the July/August issue of American Heritage, and learned quite a b
What the future president learned during a coast-to-coast military motor expedition would later transform America.
I
Daisy Bonner, who cooked for Franklin Roosevelt for 20 years in the Georgia White House, recalled his favorite dish.
American barbecue is more than a way of cooking. It’s myth, folklore, and history.
A wood e
Both our Constitution and our historic monuments were trashed during recent protests.
We wonder which is worse: authorities abusing our Constitutional rights or protesters wantonly damaging historic monuments dedicated to young revolutionaries such as Lafayette and Kosciuszko?
Our research reveals that 19 artworks in the U.S. Capitol honor men who were Confederate officers or officials. What many of them said, and did, is truly despicable.
Now closed to the public as part of the enlarged White House security zone, the Square has witnessed many historic moments over the last two centuries.
As Covid-19 threatens to push millions of Americans into poverty, we can look to the past for lessons on how to deal with a pandemic.
The numbers are already grim. Worldwide, over 27 million have contracted Covid-19; nearly 875,000 have died from it.
The year 1970 was a watershed, so we asked several thoughtful writers to reflect on some key events.
Some of us remember dreaming, 50 years ago, of a computer small enough to fit in our home. And a telephone without wires.
During the Black Panther trials in New Haven 50 years ago this summer, a remarkable group of leaders helped calm a boisterous crowd of protesters.
Editor’s Note: In May 1970, my Yale classmate, Henry Louis “Skip” Gates, Jr., and I watched National Guard soldiers roll heavy tear-gas machines across the historic New Haven Green.
During the Black Panther trials in New Haven 50 years ago this summer, a remarkable group of leaders helped calm a boisterous crowd of protesters.
Editor’s Note: In May 1970, my Yale classmate, Henry Louis “Skip” Gates, Jr., and I watched National Guard soldiers roll heavy tear-gas machines across the historic New Haven Green.
During George Washington’s first term, an epidemic killed one-tent of Philadelphians, which was the capital of the young United States.
Editor’s Note: Stephen Fried is a journalist and bestselling historian.
Toward the end of World War I, American doctors fought an invisible enemy on the home front — a pandemic that would kill more people than any other outbreak of disease in human history.
Editor's Note: John Barry is the author of The Great Influenza: The Epic
Sixteen historic sites in Boston remind Americans of the events that led to our nation’s birth, from the Boston Massacre to Breed's Hill and the USS Constitution.
Editor's Note: Brent Glass is Director Emeritus of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History and the author of 50 Great American Places: Essential Historic Sites Across the U.S., from which this essay is adapted.