Issue


Featured Articles

Genealogy The Search For A Personal Past

Author: Peter Andrews

A once laughable pursuit is now seen by historians as a serious way to explore where we came from and who we are

Catawba Chronicle

Author:

A contemporary artist re-creates two and a half centuries of the life of a North Carolina county

The Best Background

Author: Judson Hale

When it comes to genealogical pride, there’s nothing to equal the modest satisfaction of a slightly threadbare, socially impregnable New Englander. A canny guide to the subtle distinctions of America’s most rarefied society.

America Was Promises

Author: Robert Cowley

An Interview With Archibald MacLeish

Putting Worms Back In Apples

Author: Walter Karp

In reconstructing the past, Old Sturbridge Village is doing a lot more than selling penny candy and buggy rides. Struggling for verisimilitude, curators are raising scrawny chickens, trudging behind 150-year-old plows—and keeping pesticides out of the orchards.

Meet Me In St. Lewis, Louie

Author: Emily Hahn

A collection of little-known early-twentieth-century photographs of St. Louis recalls the author’s unfashionably happy childhood

Whistling Women

Author: Daniel H. Resneck

How a young New York society matron named Alice Shaw dazzled English royalty with her extraordinary embouchure

The Olympics That Almost Wasn’t

Author: Al J. Stump

In 1984 Los Angeles will once again play host to the Summer Olympics. It’s got to be easier that the first time. That was just fifty years ago, when, in the teeth of the Great Depression, a group of local boosters boldly set about planning

Krazy Kat A Love Story

Author: Edward Sorel

There’s a corner of every Americans heart that is reserved for a cartoon cat. Its name might be Garfield, Sylvester, Fritz, or Felix. But there will never be another Krazy.