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Featured Essays

Some writers ignore a mountain of evidence that is contrary to their theories about the telephone's development.

The extravaganza celebrating the nation’s first century was the greatest cultural event of America’s Gilded Age.

At the nation’s pivotal moment — the Civil War — two seventeenth-century vessels kept sailing through the American mind: the Mayflower and the slaver White Lion. Their wakes still cut our waters.

Our Founders profoundly transformed the way people participate in government.

America 250!

Patriots or Terrorists? | Fall 2008, Vol 58, No 5

By Edwin G. Burrows

The Lost Story of Revolutionary War POW’s

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Rethinking the Boston Massacre | Special Issue - George Washington Prize 2018, Vol 63, No 2

By Eric Hinderaker

It is one of the most notorious incidents in American history, and also one of the least understood.

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The Forgotten Battle of Menotomy | Spring 2025, Vol 70, No 2

By Michael Ruderman

Overshadowed in memory by Lexington and Concord, the Massachusetts town of Menotomy saw the most violent and deadly fighting on April 19, 1775.

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How One Man Launched a Revolution | Spring 2018 , Vol 63, No 1

By Christine Gibson

Thomas Paine's Common Sense helped Americans "decide upon the propriety of separation,” as George Washington said.

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The Shots Heard Round the World | Spring 2025, Vol 70, No 2

By John Ferling

What began as a civil war within the British Empire continued until it became a wider conflict affecting peoples and countries across Europe and North America.

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Classic Essays from the Archives

FDR and His Women | March 2003, Summer 2025, Vol 54, No 1

By Ellen Feldman

A novelist who has just spent several years studying Eleanor Roosevelt, Lucy Rutherfurd, and Missy LeHand tells a moving story of love: public and private, given and withheld.

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“The Miraculous Care Of Providence” | February/March 1982, Vol 33, No 2

By James Thomas Flexner

George Washington’s Narrow Escapes

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How My Father and President Kennedy Saved The World | October 2002, Vol 53, No 5

By Sergei Khrushchev

The Cuban Missile Crisis as seen from the Kremlin

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