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June 2023

vol
Volunteers and staff at Fort Ticonderoga launch their new bateau, recreated authentically by master shipbuilder Dale Henry. The boat serves to remind visitors of the region's important role in the early development of America, and also recalls the dramatic attack on the French fort in 1755 when the British army was transported on a thousand such vessels. Photo by Edwin Grosvenor

The coming of America’s bicentennial in 1976 inspired thousands of citizens to get involved in the work of local history. Collecting, recording, displaying, and recounting the stories of institutions, neighborhoods, and families was a way for people to celebrate America’s history on the scale at which they tend to experience it — the local level. 

Ernie Pyle in Italy, 1944, US Army Signal Corps
Ernie Pyle in Italy, 1944. US Army Signal Corps

Editor's Note: David Chrisinger directs the Public Policy Writing Workshop at the University of Chicago, and is the author of several books, including The Soldier's Truth: Ernie Pyle and the Story of World War II, from which he adapted portions of this essay.

Lt Harry Stewart in front of his plane
Capt. Harry Stewart, one of the last surviving members of the Tuskegee Airmen, was part of a team that won the U.S. Air Force's inaugural "Top Gun" competition in 1949.U.S. Air Force

Editor’s Note: A longtime pilot and aviation historian, Philip Handleman is co-author with Lt. Col. Harry T. Stewart, Jr. of  Soaring to Glory: A Tuskegee Airman’s Firsthand Account of World War II, from which he adapted portions of this article.

fdr group
Historians have not paid enough attention to FDR's relationships with his four closest associates, says the author. These include Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes (third from left) and Department of Agriculture head Henry Wallace (to the right of FDR). In August 1935, they lunched with members of the Civilian Conservation Corps at Camp Big Meadows, at the top of the Shenandoah National Park. Library of Congress

Promotional illustration for Woodstock by Arnold Skolnick. Courtesy of Wikipedia
Arnold Skolnick created the poster for the 1969 Woodstock festival. Wikipedia

Bruce Watson, a contributing editor of American Heritage, writes for our website and his own at TheAttic.space.

WOODSTOCK, NY — Thirty miles down the road, on a slope so green and sweeping that it looked like God’s own amphitheater, the crowds poured in over half a century ago. But the human hordes are long gone now. In their memory, summer crowds flock to this Hudson Valley hamlet with the name that still sings.

waldseemuller
The famous Martin Waldseemüller map from 1507 was the first to depict America as a separate continent from Asia and the first to include the name "America," possibly derived from the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci. Library of Congress

Editor’s Note: Jonathan Cohen is a poet, translator, and scholar with expertise in inter-American literature. Portions of this essay originally appeared in The American Voice

Bruce Catton
Bruce Catton was the founding editor of American Heritage in 1954.

When David McCullough graduated from Yale University in 1955, his aunt bought him A Stillness at Appomattox by Bruce Cation. The gift changed his life.

“I had read very little about the Civil War, and nothing swept me into the human drama of the war as the Catton book did,” recalled McCullough, who, after working as an editor with Catton at American Heritage, went on to win two Pulitzer Prizes for his books on Harry Truman and John Adams.

“History, in his hands, was anything but dry and tedious with all the flavor squeezed out of it,” McCullough told me. “I was caught up in the enthralling, real drama about authentic flesh-and-blood people, and the pull was altogether as powerful as in a great novel.”

Editor’s Note: One of the most respected historians of the Civil War and Indian conflicts, Peter Cozzens has written 17 books, including The Earth is Weeping: The Epic Story of the Indian Wars of the American West, which won the Gilder Lehrman Prize for Military History. He adapted the following from his latest book, A Brutal Reckoning: Andrew Jackson, the Creek Indians, and the Epic War for the American South.

Hernando De Soto, Library of Congress
Hernando de Soto was from Extremadura, Spain. Library of Congress

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