Editor’s Note: Nicholas Guyatt is a historian, the author of six books, and a lecturer in modern history at the University of Cambridge. His most recent book is The Hated Cage: An American Tragedy in Britain’s Most Terrifying Prison, from which he adapted this essay.
DELANO, CALIFORNIA — 1965 — Singing, marching, and chanting “Viva La Huelga!,” two thousand farm workers picket the grape fields of California's Central Valley. Some have worked those fields for decades. Others are children earning 80 cents an hour. Will someone take up their cause?
Editor’s Note: We asked Mike Purdy, a historian and author of 101 Presidential Insults: What They Really Thought About Each Other — and What It Means to Us, to share with us some of his favorite insults that U.S. Presidents threw at each other. Mr. Purdy is also the author of the recently published book Presidential Friendships: How They Changed History.
Editor’s Note: Steve Wiegard is the author of ten books, mostly on American history, and he was the longtime senior writer at the San Francisco Chronicle and San Diego Evening Tribune. He adapted the following essay from his most recent book, 1876 – Year of the Gun: The Year Bat, Wyatt, Custer, Jesse and the Two Bills (Buffalo and Wild) created the Wild West, and Why It’s Still With Us.
It is uncommon for American presidents to have their post-presidency pronouncements remembered. Yet the most oft-quoted words spoken by Theodore Roosevelt come from a speech he gave after he left office. In 1910, after completing a safari in Africa, Roosevelt had been invited to speak at the Sorbonne. The speech included a passage that has been quoted and cited widely in the century that followed.
Editor’s Note: This summer, Jim Thorpe’s records at the 1912 Olympic Games were finally restored, 110 years too late. He lost them after it was discovered he had violated the Olympics’ strict amateurism regulations at the time; he had briefly been paid $25 a week to play minor league baseball.
In Summer 2024, we are hiring several summer interns to help us build Fourscore (4score.org), our new system for teaching American history. Interns will help locate important original historical documents (speeches, legislation, letters, articles, etc.) and upload them to Fourscore. They will also generate categorization and other metadata about the documents they upload.
Interns should be currently attending (or recently graduated from) college and have some background in American history, or be high school students who have completed AP US History.
Fourscore is being developed by American Heritage, the leading magazine of American history for 75 years. Its offices are in the American News Women's Club near Dupont Circle, Washington, DC.
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Editor's Note: In memory of David McCullough, we reprint here the first article he wrote after he joined the staff of American Heritage. Expanding this essay on his own time over the next two years, McCullough published his first book, The Johnstown Flood, in 1968.
David McCullough recalled the moments that got him started “in the history business.” In 1965, he came across a spectacular photograph of the unveiling of the Statue of Liberty. Showing it to the editors of American Heritage, he was invited to write an article which was published in the February issue the following year as “Hail, Liberty!”