Issue

August/September 1982, Volume 33, No.5


Featured Articles

The Agony of the Indianapolis

Author: Kenneth E. Ethridge

She was the last major American warship sunk during World War II, and her sinking was the single worst open-sea disaster in our naval history. How could it have happened?

Match Safes

Author:

Once you’ve discovered fire, you have to keep it from burning you. This is how it was managed before the safety match.

Genealogy The Search For A Personal Past

Author: Peter Andrews

A once laughable pursuit is now seen by historians as a serious way to explore where we came from and who we are

Catawba Chronicle

Author:

A contemporary artist re-creates two and a half centuries of the life of a North Carolina county

The Best Background

Author: Judson Hale

When it comes to genealogical pride, there’s nothing to equal the modest satisfaction of a slightly threadbare, socially impregnable New Englander. A canny guide to the subtle distinctions of America’s most rarefied society.

America Was Promises

Author: Robert Cowley

An Interview With Archibald MacLeish

Putting Worms Back In Apples

Author: Walter Karp

In reconstructing the past, Old Sturbridge Village is doing a lot more than selling penny candy and buggy rides. Struggling for verisimilitude, curators are raising scrawny chickens, trudging behind 150-year-old plows—and keeping pesticides out of the orchards.

Meet Me In St. Lewis, Louie

Author: Emily Hahn

A collection of little-known early-twentieth-century photographs of St. Louis recalls the author’s unfashionably happy childhood

Whistling Women

Author: Daniel H. Resneck

How a young New York society matron named Alice Shaw dazzled English royalty with her extraordinary embouchure