Allen Barra

Allen Barra is a sports journalist who writes regularly for The Wall Street Journal. He formerly served as an editor for American Heritage, where he wrote about 20th century sports and popular culture. His 2009 book, Yogi Berra: Eternal Yankee, was followed by Rickwood Field: A Century in America's Oldest Ballpark in 2010.

Articles by this Author

Geoffrey C. Ward’s New History of World War II, Winter 2008 | Vol. 58, No. 1

Geoffrey C. Ward's New History of World War II

A Funny Man Writes A Serious Historical Novel, April/May 2007 | Vol. 58, No. 2

Gene Wilder discusses his new World War I adventure

Why 1848?, February/March 2007 | Vol. 58, No. 1

Kurt Andersen gives a neglected year its due

Screenings, February/March 2007 | Vol. 58, No. 1

Robert Altman

The Greatest Series?, October 2006 | Vol. 57, No. 5

Just as the year changed the nation, so its World Series changed American sports.

The Other British Invasion, October 2006 | Vol. 57, No. 5

In 1964, the most popular movie star in America had a license to kill from the British government.

Grim Reapings, June/July 2006 | Vol. 57, No. 3

The classic that seeped into "Deadwood"—and many other Westerns.

Dodge Vs. Deadwood, June/July 2006 | Vol. 57, No. 3

What does the only Western on television today have in common with the most popular TV Western ever?

The Man Who Made "Deadwood", June/July 2006 | Vol. 57, No. 3

The creator of the immensely popular new Western discusses what makes it truly new.

Act One, February/March 2006 | Vol. 57, No. 1

All the President’s Movies

The Seven Years’ Movie, November/December 2005 | Vol. 56, No. 6

A spectacular and painstaking PBS series brings the war to the screen

The Movies That Mattered, October 2005 | Vol. 56, No. 5

10 films that helped shape a generation

Football Coach, October 2005 | Vol. 56, No. 5

Screenings, August/September 2005 | Vol. 56, No. 4

Dashiell Hammett

Screenings, February/March 2005 | Vol. 56, No. 1

The Hidden Brando

“The Main Event”, February/March 2005 | Vol. 56, No. 1

Slavery Televised

Historical Movies Not to Be Missed, November/December 2004 | Vol. 55, No. 6

European Observer, October 2004 | Vol. 55, No. 5

Screenings, June/July 2004 | Vol. 55, No. 3

And starring Pancho Villa as himself

Screenings, April/May 2004 | Vol. 55, No. 2

My Darling Clementine

The Ten Most-Influential Americans Since 1954, April/May 2004 | Vol. 55, No. 2

The 50 Biggest Changes in the Last 50 Years

Screenings, February/March 2004 | Vol. 55, No. 1

Gods and Generals

Frontiersman, October 2003 | Vol. 54, No. 5

Screening, June/July 2003 | Vol. 54, No. 3

The San Patricios

Screenings, November/December 2001 | Vol. 52, No. 8

Film Director, September 2001 | Vol. 52, No. 6

Show Business, June 2001 | Vol. 52, No. 4

A critic looks at 10 movies that show how Americans work together.

French Hero Of The American Revolution, May/June 2000 | Vol. 51, No. 3

Gangster, May/June 1999 | Vol. 50, No. 3

Who Was Wyatt Earp?, December 1998 | Vol. 49, No. 8

From law officer to murderer to Hollywood consultant: the strange career of a man who became myth

"WEB ONLY STORIES" BY THIS CONTRIBUTOR

The Greatness of Hank Williams—As Explored in a New Biography

Hank Williams was the last echo of the barbaric yawp from Walt Whitman’s America. In just five short years, from 1948 to his death in the backseat of a car on the way to a concert on January 1, 1953, he recorded 66 songs, most of them his own compositions, many of which can still be heard on radio…

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Ambrose, Stephen E.

Stephen E. Ambrose (1936-2002) was a historian and professor who wrote on military history, presidential history, and American expansion and foreign policy. Ambrose has been praised for his biographies of Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon, and for helping to galvanize interest in World War II.

Becker, Elizabeth

Elizabeth Becker is an award-winning journalist and the author of several books. Her history When The War Was Over: Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge won accolades from the Robert F. Kennedy book award, while her recent biography of female conflict journalists You Don’t Belong Here: How Three Women Rewrote the Story of War won the 2022 Sperber Book Prize and Harvard’s Goldsmith Book Prize. She is also the author of America’s Vietnam War: A Narrative History for young adults.

Bird, Kai

Kai Bird is a historian and Executive Director of Leon Levy Center for Biography at the City University of New York. He is best known for writing about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Vietnam War, US-Middle East relations and biographies of political figures. Bird is the author of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize, and The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames, a New York Times bestseller. His most recent book is The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter.

Blight, David W.

David W. Blight is the Class of 1954 Professor of American History and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance & Abolition at Yale University. Recently, Blight has written A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Narratives of Emancipation, and Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, which won the Bancroft Prize, the Abraham Lincoln Prize, and the Frederick Douglass Prize.