American Heritage

FOR YEARS, A COPY OF THIS PHOTOGRAPH HUNG IN THE HOUSE OF WENDELL C. HOLT'S grandfather, in Fairfield, Illinois. It shows Holt's father, William, around the age of eight, and his dog Cap, a creature that to young William must have loomed as large as...

Col. Robert Morgan flew 25 daylight missions over Nazi Germany and France and led the first B-29 raid on Tokyo, yet his claim to fame lies in a fetching piece of artwork and a snappy nickname painted on the nose of his plane. Morgan was the pilot of...

ELLIS ISLAND PUTS ITS RECORDS ONLINE ACCORDING TO A 1995 POLL, MORE THAN 113 million Americans are researching their family histories. Presumably, the others are put off by the hobby's side effects: nausea induced by hours spent staring at microfilm,...

FEW THINGS COULD COAX US TO SHORE WHEN THE SURFING WAS GOOD ... Growing up in Satellite Beach, Florida, in the shadow of the Kennedy Space Center, in the 1960s, my friends and I often had our routines interrupted by cries of "Missile! Missile!"...

ANDREW JACKSON GOT IN BIG TROUBLE WHEN HE WAS IN BUSH'S FIX FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MORE THAN 70 years, the United States is dealing with the politics of surplus. Between 1930 and 1997, the government ran surpluses in only 10 years, and they were...

CONFRONTING AN ISSUE AS OLD AS PUBLIC SCHOOLS OUR INTERMINABLE NATIONAL argument about education now seems to have boiled down to the debate over school vouchers, both left and right having more or less accepted the idea that we must have "standards."...

After 20 years of looking for someone who could perform the "middle deal," Dai Vernon had pretty much decided this supreme piece of sleight of hand was a fable. Then, one night in a Wichita jail, a prisoner told Vernon he'd seen a man do it ... ...

1851 THE FIRST PROHIBITION LAW 150 YEARS AGO ON JUNE 2, GOV. JOHN Hubbard of Maine signed an act prohibiting the sale, manufacture, or "keeping for sale" of alcoholic beverages anywhere in the state. The law's enactment culminated two decades...

As the 2000 election made very clear, we are torn between revering judges and despising them. It's in the nature of the job. A JUDGE, THE OLD SAW GOES, IS A LAWYER WHO KNEW A governor (or a President or a senator). In most states, a judge is a lawyer...