A pumpkin and a typewriter …

In an excerpt from her forthcoming biographical study, Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character —completed shortly before her death this winter…the late historian Fawn Brodie unravels the extraordinary psychological and evidentiary tangle that bound Nixon, Alger Hiss, and Whittaker Chambers together in one of the most sensational spy trials in our history—and set Nixon on the road to the Presidency.

An airplane in every garage …

Ever since the Wright brothers successfully defied gravity in 1903, the notion of “the family car of the air” has been a recurring—and often hilarious—dream of aerial entrepreneurs who have devised everything from auto-gyros to “aero-cars” in an attempt to persuade Americans to become sky commuters. Being sensible folk, as author Joseph J. Corn points out in his article, most Americans have resisted the impulse.

An American perspective …

In October of this year, the National Gallery in Washington, D. C.—with the cooperation of the Amon Carter Museum of Western Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art—will begin a major show of what has been described as “the finest private collection in the country of nineteenth-century art.” It is entitled “An American Perspective,” and in an exclusive preview, we offer an extensive color portfolio of some of the most evocative of the show’s paintings.

Plus …

The remarkable exploits of a country boy called Sergeant York; the first American cookbook; how the game of tennis became the business of tennis; the re-creation of Williamsburg, Virginia; and a good deal more, all of it richly illustrated.