Issue


Featured Articles

The Wealth Of The Nation

Author: Adam Smith

The most influential economist in the United States talks about prudence, productivity, and the pursuit of liquidity in the light of the past

Two Cheers For Optimism

Author: Robert Bendiner

One man measures his life-span against the length of recorded history and finds tidings of comfort and hope

What If?

Author: Marcus Cunliffe

Conjectural or speculative history can be a silly game, as in “What if the Roman legions had machine guns?” But this historian argues that to enlarge our knowledge and understanding it sometimes makes very good sense to ask …

Angel In The Parlor: The Art Of Abbott Thayer

Author: Ross Anderson

He loved women so much he painted wings on them. After years of neglect, he is now being appreciated.

Winter Of The Yalu

Author: James Dill

A soldier remembers the freezing, fearful retreat down the Korean Peninsula after the Chinese armies smashed across the border

A Postage Stamp History Of The U.S. In The Twentieth Century

Author: Judson Mead

Here is the federal government’s own picture history of our times—and it tells us more than you might think

Chopin Called Him “The King Of Pianists”

Author: Peter Andrews

But was Louis Moreau Gottschalk America’s first musical genius or simply the purveyor of sentimental claptrap?

If You’ve Got An Ounce Of Feeling, Hallmark Has A Ton Of Sentiment

Author: James Mckinley

How the colossus of the “social expression industry” always manages to say it better than you do

Family Platters

Author: Joan Paterson Kerr

From Germany and Switzerland, farmer-potters transplanted their skills to Pennsylvania and produced a distinctive ceramic found nowhere else in America

Interior America

Author:

In the thirties the WPA decided it would be good to know just what the insides of Victorian homes, offices, and stores had looked like. The artist-historian Perkins Harnly created a sumptuous record.