Napoleon Bonaparte’s rise and fall are one of the most spectacular in recorded history. The French general and statesman turned self-appointed emperor revolutionized the nation’s military, legal and educational institutions. But after some of his most audacious expansionist ...read more
December 23, 1778 dawned cold and dank over the hills of Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, the scent of snow in the air. General George Washington, pacing the headquarters tent of his revolutionary army’s winter encampment, was dictating a testy ultimatum to the Continental Congress, ...read more
Frederick Douglass, the most influential black man in 19th-century America, wrote 1,200 pages of autobiography, one of the most impressive performances of memoir in the nation’s history. The three texts included Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave ...read more
After coalition forces invaded Iraq in March 2003 and toppled its government, the U.S. military launched an intensive manhunt. The target? The nation’s deposed dictator, Saddam Hussein, who escaped Baghdad when the capital fell. Nine months later, in an operation code-named ...read more
For Robert Whited and Jean White, there was never a question that they would serve in the military. And they never doubted the merit of the war they were sent to fight in Korea. It was this unbending faith in their service as U.S. Marines that carried both men through America’s ...read more
Everywhere I go lately people stop to ask me: Are these the worst of times? No, history reassures us. Imagine Abraham Lincoln entering the White House with the country about to rupture into a civil war that would leave more than 600,000 dead. Theodore Roosevelt was thrust into ...read more
How many American first ladies created legacies that overshadow those of their presidential husbands? It’s a case that can be argued for Betty Ford, who courageously took on taboo topics such as breast cancer, abortion and addiction—and in doing so, started national conversations ...read more
The warning signs of an epic financial crisis were blinking steadily through 2008—for those who were paying close attention. One clue? According to the ProQuest newspaper database, the phrase "since the Great Depression" appeared in The New York Times nearly twice as often in ...read more
Amidst all the convulsions America experienced in 1968—the shocking assassinations, the violent protests, the atrocities in Vietnam—revolution rumbled even through the genteel world of men’s tennis. The unexpected messenger was a slender, bespectacled 25-year-old Army lieutenant ...read more
I heard whooshing sounds… One of the most vivid pictures I have of the day is this waterfall of fire falling down. It was raining fire inside the elevator bank… I yelled ‘Stairs! Follow me!’ I turned right and just started running. —Neil Lucente, then-employee of Network Plus, ...read more
Like most Americans, Don Seki and Frank Mitoshi Wada remember the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii as a dark day. For these two “Nisei” (American-born children of Japanese immigrants), December 7th, 1941 was darker than for most, since it led to their ...read more
Though Tony King is sharp and alert at the age of 94, a part of him is trapped forever in the summer of 1945. He time-travels there when he speaks of it—even as he sits in a wheelchair near the lone window in his San Francisco apartment. King’s eyes mist over as he tells his ...read more
The question of where Russia begins and ends—and who constitutes the Russian people—has preoccupied Russian thinkers for centuries. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the Russian aggression against Ukraine in 2014 turned these concerns into a big “Russian question” ...read more
On the evening of June 17, 2015, Dylann Roof, a 21-year-old baby-faced white supremacist, walked into a prayer group at the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. After sitting quietly for nearly an hour, he stood up, pulled out a ...read more
In the power relationship between America’s enslaved people and their enslavers, it’s widely assumed that the planter class held all the cards. After all, they were the dominant group who frequently enforced their will with whips, chains, dogs—and worse. Most enslaved people ...read more
In 1913, when it opened its doors to passengers, the 18-story, 500,000 square-foot Michigan Central Station was the tallest rail station in the world. But it was more then just a transportation hub; the station, with vaulted ceilings and marble floors, represented Detroit’s ...read more
If you were to pick the one, singular, culture-defining moment from the ’90s—a decade that gave us so many—you’d be hard pressed to beat Bill Clinton–Monica Lewinsky affair. Even now, in our current climate of oversharing and punch-drunk numbness to the spewing of digital media, ...read more
In a region filled with the palatial homes of the rich and famous, one mansion stands out. Measuring an astonishing 38,000 square feet (plus 17,000 more on the exterior), it was crafted with the finest and most expensive materials. The interior boasts 12 bedrooms, 21 bathrooms ...read more
What causes racial riots? In recent years, especially following the disturbances that erupted in Ferguson, Missouri and Baltimore, Maryland following the police-involved deaths of Michael Brown and Freddie Gray, pundits and editorial writers have offered many different ...read more
What does one say about a hero like Robert Francis Kennedy that has not been said already? I do not even recall when I first discovered “Bobby.” All I knew from childhood was his brother John, the president who had been killed, and I knew that many black households, no matter ...read more
Like many veterans of the killing fields of World War I, Horace Pippin had a tough time shaking off the memories. So in the decade after the war he captured them, and tamed them, inside sketch-filled journals. He had no dearth of stories to tell. There was the terrified young ...read more
Is there any good way to teach children about lynching? After attending the opening of a powerful new memorial and museum, which together explore some of the most painful aspects of American history, I wondered about the prospect of returning there with my 12-year-old son. My ...read more
In the early hours of April 26, 1986, the world witnessed the worst nuclear catastrophe in history. A reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in northern Ukraine exploded, spreading radioactive clouds all over Europe and a large part of the globe. In all, 50 million curies of ...read more
Humans have been captivated by Mars almost as long as we’ve been watching the night sky. The ancient Greeks and Romans watched nightly as a reddish dot moved among the stars, growing dimmer and brighter in a two-year cycle. Each named it for the god of war; the Roman version, ...read more