Christine Gibson

Christine Gibson is a freelance writer and editor who previously worked as an assistant editor at American Heritage. After her time at American Heritage, Gibson wrote Extreme Wonders: Natural Disasters in 2007, and Extreme Wonders: Planet Earth, in 2008.

Articles by this Author

How One Man Launched a Revolution, Spring 2018 | Vol. 63, No. 1

Thomas Paine's Common Sense helped Americans "decide upon the propriety of separation,” as George Washington said.

Our Ten Worst Natural Disasters, August/September 2006 | Vol. 57, No. 4

How The Hurricane Got Its Name, August/September 2006 | Vol. 57, No. 4

It’s more than just whimsy

The Twilight Of Steam, June/July 2004 | Vol. 55, No. 3

A new museum houses a master’s photographs of how the technology that built America ended

The Sweetest Place on Earth, August/September 2003 | Vol. 54, No. 4

Milton Hershey built a company town so pleasant that it became a tourist attraction.

The 40 Richest Americans Ever, October 1998 | Vol. 49, No. 6

"WEB ONLY STORIES" BY THIS CONTRIBUTOR

September 28, 1781: The Beginning of the End

For six years, the specter of defeat had dogged Gen. George Washington’s every thought. As advantage after advantage slipped away, the American coffers dried up, and the most promising general betrayed the Revolution, it looked more and more like Washington and his motley army would lose their…

A Shooting — and the Civil Rights Movement Changes Course

James Meredith, second from right, on June 27, 1966, after rejoining the march. (Bettmann/Corbis)Hit the dirt! The cry came 51 years ago today, at 4:15 p.m. on June 6, 1966, just before three shotgun blasts exploded from the bushes along Highway 51 near Hernando, Mississippi. Two of the rounds…

Christopher Columbus, Failure

No matter how widely he was hailed as a hero fourteen years earlier, Christopher Columbus was all washed up by the time he died in 1506 (511 years ago this May 20). A sentimental imagining of the explorer's deathbed. Crowds from across Spain lined the streets of Seville in 1493 to welcome him home…

How a Bungled Meeting Ended the Cold War

Reagan and Gorbachev look dejected after their meeting in Reykjavik. (RONALD REAGAN PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY) When Soviet Secretary General Mikhail Gorbachev arrived one minute early at the Hofdi House in Reykjavik, Iceland, nineteen years ago today, President Ronald Reagan was not outside to greet…

Faces on the Barroom Wall

A landmark of comic art is saved from destruction The newspaper comic is among the most ephemeral of art forms, but for almost 30 years a mural featuring cartoon characters has been lovingly preserved by the owners of a bar in New York City. The longtime showpiece of Costello’s, at 225 East Forty-…

The Twilight of Steam

A new museum houses a master’s photographs of how the technology that built America ended Three modes of transportation in one picture—four, if you count submarine racing. (COURTESY OF THE O. WINSTON LINK MUSEUM) Between 1955 and 1960, O. Winston Link made 21 self-financed trips to Maryland,…

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Ambrose, Stephen E.

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Bird, Kai

Kai Bird is a historian and Executive Director of Leon Levy Center for Biography at the City University of New York. He is best known for writing about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Vietnam War, US-Middle East relations and biographies of political figures. Bird is the author of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize, and The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames, a New York Times bestseller. His most recent book is The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter.

Blight, David W.

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Brands, H. W.

H. W. Brands is a best-selling author, historian, and the Jack S. Blanton Sr. Chair at the University of Texas at Austin. He has written thirty books, including The Zealot and the Emancipator, a dual biography of the abolitionist John Brown and President Abraham Lincoln, as well as The First American and Traitor to His Class, both finalists for the Pulitzer Prize and the Los Angeles Times Prize.