A postage stamp history of the United States in the twentieth century …

Here is the federal government’s own picture history of our times—and it tells us more than you might think. By comparing the lapse of time between the issue date of U.S. commemorative stamps and the actual dates of the events and personages they depict, we can arrive at a revealing, “official” philatelic portrait of our nation. Labor and women made great strides in the early 190Os and blacks have always been here, but for the Post Office they were invisible until much later in the century. (And we still haven’t caught up with Prohibition, the Korean War, or Watergate!) All in all, a lavish collection presented in full color.

The winter of the Yalu …

In late autumn of 1950 U.S. troops were pushing up the Korean peninsula virtually unopposed, chasing the disorganized remnants of the North Korean army. Then, overnight, the victors found themselves facing annihilation: thirty-three divisions of seasoned Chinese soldiers had swarmed across the YaIu River and punched through the Allied line. In a vivid memoir, an American officer recalls his odyssey through a frozen land after his army disintegrated around him.

The art of Abbott Thayer …

He lived the most eccentric of lives, but the solemn virgins and seraphic children that dominated his work would never have suggested it. Derided as stuffy and sentimental after his death in the early 1920s, Abbott Thayer is only now beginning to regain his rightful place as one of our leading painters. Along with an impressive portfolio of his works, the ranking Thayer authority traces the course of the artist’s career.

Plus …

A highly personal assessment of the myth and reality of the Southern woman; the scandalous career of the nineteenth-century composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk; Marcus Cunlif fe on the use and misuse of make-believe history; a provocative interview with the economist Henry Kaufman by “Adam Smith” … and much more, all richly illustrated.