Suzanne McGee

In the mid 18th century, as British colonists began steadily populating North America’s eastern seaboard, a burgeoning world power was working to establish settlements on the continent’s distant northwest coast: Russia. Ever since its 1721 victory in the Great Northern War ...read more

Women in ancient Rome, whether free or enslaved, played many roles: empress, priestess, goddess, shop owner, midwife, prostitute, daughter, wife and mother. But they lacked any voice in public life. They also lacked a voice in history. With few exceptions—like the words of the ...read more

The “Reconstruction amendments” are three key changes to the U.S. Constitution ratified during Reconstruction between 1865 and 1870 that address the way that slavery’s demise reshaped America’s legal system and redefined what it meant to be free and equal following the Civil War. ...read more

As the Soviet Union's primary secret intelligence agency during the Cold War, the KGB gained notoriety for its widespread global espionage. But the organization—and its communist-era predecessors—also played a key role inside the Soviet Union: quashing political dissent. ...read more

On Christmas Eve 1979, the Soviet Union began an invasion of Afghanistan, its Central Asian neighbor to the south. First, it air-dropped elite troops into principal Afghan cities. Soon after, it deployed motorized divisions across the border. Within days, the KGB, which had ...read more

On March 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln climbed into an open carriage to travel to the United States Capitol to be sworn in as the country’s 16th president. There, in his inaugural address, he movingly called for unity in the deeply divided nation, famously appealing to “the better ...read more

The weather in the northeastern United States on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001, was what air traffic controllers describe as “severe clear.” A high-pressure system had blown the previous day’s storms out to sea; skies were an intense cobalt blue. “A severe clear day ...read more

The phrase “industrial innovation” conjures images of 3-D printing or robots working on a factory assembly line. But while most people take washers and refrigerators for granted today, a century ago, these machines revolutionized people’s daily lives. The introduction of running ...read more

On the surface, everything was hunky-dory in the summer of 1929. The total wealth of the United States had almost doubled during the Roaring Twenties, fueled, in part, by stock market speculation eagerly undertaken by a wide swath of citizens ranging from Fifth Avenue dowagers to ...read more

In the universe of historic photographs, few are more iconic this this image of key White House policymakers watching and waiting for confirmation that SEAL Team Six had succeeded in capturing or killing Osama bin Laden. Although this photo is known as the “Situation Room” ...read more

It took nearly a decade following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C. for American intelligence authorities to realize that al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden—mastermind of the 9/11 plot—hadn’t been skulking in a cave or a remote tribal ...read more

Sometimes, being polite just doesn’t work. As the 20th century dawned, American activists for women's suffrage were coming to the conclusion that decades of quiet appeals to reason and logic had failed to move the needle for their cause. Fresh strategies were required. A new ...read more

How does a restaurant become “historic”? For most American eateries, it’s a feat to survive even a few years—much less decades or centuries. In the brutally competitive industry, statistics suggest that 60 percent of eateries don’t make it past their first year; 80 percent close ...read more

When the far-right Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater ran for the American presidency in 1964, he never even pretended to woo voters in the political center. “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice,” declared Goldwater in his speech accepting the Republican Party’s ...read more

H. Ross Perot didn’t win the 1992 presidential election. He didn’t even capture a single Electoral College vote. Nonetheless, the Texan billionaire’s outsider bid for the American presidency transformed the political and electoral landscape, in both the short and longer term. By ...read more

How crucial were the French to helping colonists win the American Revolution? An iconic oil painting of the British surrender at Yorktown, now hanging in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda, perfectly captures the partnership. As the grim, resigned British general at the picture’s center ...read more