Kit Carson’s image obscures the reality of the multicultural West.
featured
Revisiting “Forty Acres and a Mule:” The Backstory to the Backstory of America’s Mythic Promise
A brief look at the history and context surrounding the phrase “Forty Acres and a Mule”
This Day in Cabinet History: Presidential Power and Diplomacy
A meeting that would lodge the authority for foreign diplomacy in the executive branch
“Infection Unperceiv’d, in Many a Place”: The London Plague of 1625, Viewed from Plymouth Rock
Remembering 1625’s outbreak of plague in London
The Battle of Valverde, New Mexico: February 21, 1862
ill Davidson was cooking up his meager breakfast on the morning of February 21, 1862 when he heard the distinctive pop! pop! pop! of rifle fire, echoing over the sand hills. It was coming from a few miles north of […]
Reversing a River: How Chicago Flushed its Human Waste Downstream
“…humans needed to work with the land and its waterways, not against it.”
The Fall of the House of Adams: Charles Francis Adams Jr. on Race and Public Service
A look inside America’s first political dynasty
From the Front Porch to the Nation’s Airwaves: The Commercial Rise of Country Music during the Great Depression
“… the Great Depression was the gravitational pull that created country stars and their nationwide universe of listeners.”
“Crusader in My Own Way”: Nat King Cole Exposes Segregation in Las Vegas
“Cole had offered a powerful message to the nation without saying a word.”
Gerald Ford, Impeachment, and The Difference Between Politics and Law Enforcement
The only Eagle Scout elected President, Ford was far from being a butter-fingered lummox.