Learning to go to the movies

We did not easily take to the great democratic art form; at early screenings people panicked in the dark, and a whole new code of etiquette had to be invented. David Nasaw explores the thorny path that led to the final embrace between Americans and the movies.

The war is finally over

World War I, that is. John Lukacs explains why although the fighting stopped on the Western front seventy-five years ago next month, the war went on for generations. And Donald Morris retrieves the great, forgotten Marine writer-artist of the conflict.

Plus …

Bernard Weisberger on the the complex—and compelling—background of the current debate about immigration … John Fitzgerald Kennedy: a historian’s assessment thirty years after Dallas … and, should bird, stuffing, and inlaws prove insufficient stimulus for thanks, more.