A World War I Dispatch from France
In August 1913, as the Great War began in Europe, Edith Wharton found herself in Paris. Upon the order for General Mobilization, she saw no panic, no tumult, only a sense of political and social unity and a quiet readiness. ...
Lincoln Frees the Slaves
In September 1862, some fourteen months into the Civil War and having pondered deeply the freeing of the slaves, Lincoln issued his first Emancipation Proclamation. Lord Charnwood recounts the development and importance of this signal event in American history.
His Findings in the Galapagos Islands Lead Him to the Theory of Evolution
The twenty-two-year-old Charles Darwin’s voyage aboard HMS Beagle to the coastal areas of South America brought him to the Galapagos Islands and an encounter with its myriad species. Here is his account of that visit, which led him toward his ...
Vietnam 1965: A Turning Point
In South Vietnam in February 1965, insurgents mounted a major attack on the U.S. base at Pleiku in the Central Highlands. At the time it seemed a turning point, leading to the U.S. decision to bomb North Vietnam and to ...
Steve Jobs Comes of Age
In making Apple a world-changing success, was Steve Jobs a genius—or simply an expert marketer of a machine whose time had come? And what of his personality? To say he was curmudgeonly would be doing him a great favor. Walter ...
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, has become one of the more popular psychological conditions of our time. First used to describe the symptoms related to combat experiences in war, today a diagnosis of PTSD has been expanded to include some of the most common everyday situations. How it got that way is the subject of Stewart Justman’s fascinating exploration of the rise of PTSD—a story of a questionable diagnosis and of medicine gone astray.
The 1849 Gold Rush in California brought to a boiling point the new state’s unruly politics and produced mob rule in the muddy streets of San Francisco. Cecelia Holland’s compelling account of these events reveals a disturbing underside of democratic government in a nation headed for civil war.
In his famous Autobiography, Franklin displays the iconic American virtues of thrift, ambition, hard work, self-improvement, and common sense. In these selections he reflects upon his rise and the self-taught lessons that brought his success.
Walker Evans’s iconic photograph of Ellie Mae Burroughs of Hale County, Alabama, made while he was working with James Agee, has become a memorable symbol of the Great Depression. How it came to be, and what consequences it provoked, make for a fascinating tale.
From the 1920s to the 1960s, Jewish clothiers supplied the accoutrements of success—the Ivy League style—at American universities, but especially at Yale, one of the oldest and most traditional. At the same time Yale admitted few Jews as students. And then a funny thing happened: as the penchant for repp ties and natural-shoulder suits declined at Yale, the influx of Jews—and other minorities—increased. Here’s the story of how this came about, and how Yale’s idea of success changed, related by someone who was on the scene.
American blacks entered World War II in a peculiar position. Could they fight for the freedom of others while their own country denied theirs? And could they fight honorably in a still segregated armed forces? This illuminating perspective on World War II reportage shows how questions of race followed troops to the battlefields and how black correspondents—allowed on the frontlines for the first time—reported it.
