June 2024

1. The Taking Of California

   A low comedy for high stakes: More >>>By T. H. Watkins, February 1973, Volume 24, Issue 2

2. Frémont Steals California

   By Sally Denton, Winter 2011, Volume 60, Issue 4

   A junior Army officer, acting on secret orders from the president, bluffed a far-stronger Mexican force into conceding North America's westernmost province to the United States More >>>

Like everyone else in her line of work, Martha Gellhorn was anxious in the spring of 1944, wondering where the invasion of Western Europe would begin and how she might secure a place near the action.

The veteran war correspondent wrote to her friend Eleanor Roosevelt on April 28, frustrated that she had allowed her husband, Ernest Hemingway, to coax her back from covering the war for Collier’s magazine to spend time with him in Cuba:

Editor's Note: James L. Swanson is the author of the 2006 New York Times bestseller, Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer. His most recent book is The Deerfield Massacre: A Surprise Attack, a Forced March, and the Fight for Survival in Early America, in which portions of this essay appeared.

In the ink-black predawn of February 29, 1704, the sleeping inhabitants of Deerfield, Massachusetts pull their blankets higher and huddle closer to stay warm. The village is a remote outpost of 300 souls on the isolated northwest New England frontier of a vast, early America.