Still, compared to him, compared to the people we descend from, I am free of history. I'm so free of history I have to get in a car and drive seven states to find it.
But before we cue the brass section to blare "The Stars and Stripes Forever," it might be worth taking another moment of melancholy silence to mourn the thwarted reconciliation with the mother country...
The more history I learn, the more the world fills up with stories.
The thing that drew me to Lafayette as a subject - that he was that rare object of agreement in the ironically named United States - kept me coming back to why that made him unique. Namely, that we th...
Robert Todd Lincoln, a.k.a. Jinxy McDeath.
How sad is it that this tiff sort of cheers me up? If two of the most distinguished, dedicated, and thoughtful public servants in the history of this republic could not find a way to agree to disagree...
I talk about going to [George W. Bush's] Inauguration and cryingwhen he took the oath, 'cause I was so afraid he was going to
Along with voting, jury duty, and paying taxes, goofing off is one of the central obligations of American citizenship.
Wainwright prayed to the graven image of Lafayette, since neither the president nor Congress seemed to be listening. We, the women of the United States, she told the bronze Lafayette, denied the liber...
There is something aesthetically pleasing about trading one engraving - and old map - for another - American money.
She is either male property (Mrs.), wannabe male property (Miss), or man-hating harpy (Ms.).
That August an ominous and unprecedented British armada of 450 ships and boats carrying forty-five thousand British soldiers and sailors, as well as the rented Germanic troops known as the Hessians (o...
In other words, after Winthrop has acquired all his butter firkins, food stirrers, and beer along with six dozen candles, twenty thousand biscuits, and twenty-nine sides of beef, he goes through the B...
Honestly, the only question most Americans ask about a new building at this point is basically: Is it a soul-sucking eyesore of cheap-ass despair? It's not? Whew.
In death, you get upgraded into a saint no matter how much people hated you in life.
In The Bloudy Tenent, Williams points out that Constantine did more to hurt Christ Jesus than the raging fury of the most bloody Neroes. at least under the Christian persecutor Nero, who was rumored t...
If there is a recurring theme in Garfield’s diaries it’s this: I’d rather be reading.
There's nothing more depressing than bad capitalism.
For the better part of the 1990s, it seemed like the only Americans who publicly described themselves as patriots were scary militia types hiding out in the backwoods of Michigan and Montana, cleaning...
I do not think that there can ever be enough books about anything; and I say that knowing that some of them are going to be about Pilates.
Showing 41 to 60 of 266 results