What is there left to write about George Washington? What insights can be gleaned about a man who has been the subject of centuries of biographies—many devoted to bringing the "flesh and blood" Washington to life—yet who still seems, in his "icy majesty," to stand above and apart from us?
What is there left to write about George Washington? What insights can be gleaned about a man who has been the subject of centuries of biographies—many devoted to bringing the "flesh and blood" Washington to life—yet who still seems, in his "icy majesty," to stand above and apart from us?
George Washington firmly believed that the “hand of Providence" was "conspicuous" in the miracle of American independence—secured by a ragged army, more than once on the brink of annihilation, against the greatest military power on earth. Certainly, astonishing fortune seemed to attend the…
Long before cannons, muskets, blood, and bitter sacrifices settled the question of American independence, a revolution occurred “in the minds and hearts of the people,” John Adams recalled late in life.
The Dynasty. The Evil Empire. The Bronx Bombers (and, at times, Zoo). Valued at $2.5 billion. Winner of 18 division titles, 40 American League pennants, and 27 World Series. No sports franchise in America approaches the orbit of the New York Yankees.
When Abigail Adams first met her daughter-in-law Louisa, wife of future president John Quincy Adams, she was not greatly impressed. Even before the marriage, Abigail “was troubled by the fear that Louisa might not be made of stuff stern enough, or brought up in conditions severe enough, to suit a…
Do we really need another book about Pete Rose?
Every Christmas season a new load of books about the Beatles appears, capitalizing on a baby-boom market that has yet to flicker out and the enduring love many middle-aged people feel for the Liverpudlians’ joyous noise from the 1960s. But the fanatics among us have been waiting with mounting…
For decades, the lords of big-league baseball scrambled to protect their antitrust exemption, warning that the professional game would fall apart if the owners could not conspire against free markets to run it their way. Most of all, they wanted to protect the reserve clause, under which a player…
A few years ago, I found the scorecard my grandfather had kept of a September 16, 1904, doubleheader he attended at Boston’s Huntington Grounds. He saw Cy Young pitch in the opener for the Boston Americans (now Red Sox) and Jack Chesbro pitch in the second game for the New York Highlanders (now…
His contemporaries called him “the Little Giant.” They recognized that although Stephen A. Douglas was physically a pipsqueak—standing only 5-foot-4, small even for his generation—he loomed over American political life through his intensity, intelligence, and energy. Unfortunately for his…
Just how awful was Thomas Jefferson? In an academic and media culture that sometimes seems determined to trash all things that hint at the magnificence of America, pretty awful. Jefferson, the brilliant Founder and chief author of the Declaration of Independence, that essential document of the…
Many of the Founders revered their Puritan ancestors, who had braved the deadly Atlantic, endured bitter winters, and fended off Indian attacks and starvation to establish a new society in New England, free from the oppression of the British crown. When it came time to fight the slide toward…
"Dollars damn me,” Herman Melville confessed to Nathaniel Hawthorne in June 1851, when he was contemplating the finishing touches on Moby-Dick; or, The Whale. “What I feel most moved to write, that is banned,—it will not pay. Yet, altogether, write the other way I cannot. So the product is a final…
We human beings seem to crave creation myths. The tale of Adam and Eve moved people for millennia, and still seems thrilling and sad, even though we know all about natural selection. And we still talk, however jokingly, about Abner Doubleday as the inventor of baseball. The Doubleday myth sprang…
The American Revolution A Concise History by Robert Allison Oxford, 128 pp., $18.95
Get Capone
The Intimate Lives
General Sherman's Christmas
A Country of Vast Designs
Rise and Fight Again
Samuel Adams
My Dearest Friend
The Perils of Peace
Almost a Miracle
John Adams Unbound
The Brothers Bulger
American Traveler