Trusted Writing on History, Travel, and American Culture Since 1949
World War II
Alistair Cooke's new book recalls his tours of war plants and military bases during World War II.
The War at Home Why Do We Say...? Now You Can Offer S--- On A Shingle Book $ale
The Top 10 Treasures From Abe’s First 10 Years
This June marked the tenth anniversary of Abebooks.com, an Internet operation that has made things much easier for American Heritage editors along with countless thousands of other people.
What’s going to happen when the most prosperous, best-educated generation in history finally grows up? (And just how special are the baby boomers?)
We gave the baby boomers plenty of room to play in
The law of unintended consequences is usually invoked to explain political disasters. Take Prohibition.
A young GI in Germany during the Korean War making the journey from war to peace, and from enmity to friendship, finds, amid the most tremendous change, smoldering embers of an old tyranny.
The final hours of the war were every bit as perilous as all the other ones for this American POW.
World War II was ending with more of a whimper than a Waterloo for the Anglo-American forces in Europe. The Battle of Berlin was shaping up just 60 miles to the south of where I stood, but, by design, the American and British forces were to have no part in that carnage.
Next to Winston Churchill, General George Patton gave the war’s most famous speeches. But nobody knew quite what he said—until now.
Millions of people have seen the movie Patton, which begins with a view of the general standing before a giant American flag giving a speech to his troops. The actor George C.
A humble sport in a stylish capital
In the 30s, I played some rough-and-tumble stickball in New York City—on the East Side, the West Side, uptown, downtown, in Chinatown and Little Italy, surrounded by pushcarts and cooking smells.
Those Yanks of World War II are white-haired now. Great-grandchildren play about their feet. The grand parades and great commemorations are over. Only a few monuments to their achievements are yet to be built.
One dour morning early this March, I had to drive to eastern Pennsylvania. I’d heard that a patch of the sometime-steel town of Bethlehem had been spruced up and was now a bower of post-industrial charm, so, after my errand, I made a detour and headed over to see it.
Powered flight was born exactly one hundred years ago. It changed everything, of course, but most of all, it changed how this nation wages war.
Walter Boyne’s résumé makes for unusual reading. He is the author of 42 books and one of the few people to have had bestsellers on both the fiction and the nonfiction lists of The New York Times.
“We’ve got it, but I don’t like to pour it.” The couple next to me at the bar had ordered Gray Goose vodka martinis, and the bartender didn’t want to make them. I had no idea what was going on, and neither did the couple.
In the Aleutian Islands, you can explore a landscape of violent beauty, discover the traces of an all-but-forgotten war, and (just possibly) catch a $100,000 fish.
Our common history isn’t all pleasant, but seeing it firsthand is deeply moving.
Recently discovered documents shine a new light on the President’s biggest decision
Why was the plane dropping its payload on my house?
In 1945, I was a 14-year-old boy living on the south edge of Fort Wayne, Indiana. Like many of that age and time, I was very provincial.
The campaign to revise Hitler’s reputation has gone on for 50 years, but there’s another strategy now. Some of it is built on the work of the head of the Gestapo—who may have enjoyed a comfortable retirement in America.
RECENTLY, ON SEVERAL OCCASIONS, the American public has been made aware of evidence of plagiarism practiced, alas, by celebrated American historians. This is regrettable, but nothing new. All kinds of writers have borrowed and, worse, stolen from others through the ages.
BLAMING POWELL—AND EISENHOWER—FOR NOT HAVING PUSHED THROUGH
EMBATTLED, SCRUTINIZED, POWELL SOLDIERS ON, ran the headline on the front page of The New York Times, as if the writer was astonished to find Colin Powell still at the State Department despite his disagreements with some of th
Did Americans have it better back in the 40s?
Remember September 11? Or rather, remember how it was supposed to change us all, and for the better? Among all the predictions was one that held that it would lead to “the end of irony,” the sort of earnest prognostication that is bound to seem ironic in retrospect.
Our platoon was probably the only group of Allied soldiers to witness the final degradation of Mussolini.
In December of 1942, I was drafted and sent overseas to Oran, Algeria, where I was assigned to the 91st Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron. The eyes and ears for the troops, we rode in jeeps, armored cars, and light tanks, scouting the numbers and supplies of the enemy forces.
On the 60th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, the granddaughter of a Japanese detainee recalls the community he lost and the fight he waged in the Supreme Court to win back the right to earn a living.
To the casual visitor, terminal island in Los Angeles Harbor is no more than a complex of dull warehouses and empty lots.
THE ATOLL WHERE THE TIDE OF THE PACIFIC WAR TURNED IS NOW BOTH A STIRRING HISTORICAL LANDMARK AND A STUNNING WILD LIFE REFUGE.
CONGRESS IS TRYING TO LEGISLATE THE HISTORY OF WHAT HAPPENED ON THE EVE OF PEARL HARBOR.
AN ARIZONA BURGER KING TELLS THE STORY OF A UNIQUE UNIT OF MODERN-DAY NAVAJO WARRIORS
His first memory was of a green lampshade in his father’s study. His second was of fury and frustration. His mother, father, and older brother, Win, were going up from the Stanford University campus, where he’d been born, to San Francisco, where the fleet was.
What do you need to build the only national museum dedicated to World War II? The same things we needed to fight the war it commemorates: faith, passion, perseverance, and a huge amount of money.
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