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But One Life to Lose — A Memorial Day Remembrance Continue Reading

Ol’ Deef — The conclusion of our story of Erastus Smith. Continue Reading  

The Ballad of El Sordo — He always rode with others, but he always rode alone. Continue Reading

Behold, A Pale Horse And he who sat on it had the name Death. Continue Reading

Death and Texas — They tried to suppress the disturbing feeling that they were all going to die. Continue Reading

The Voice of the Turtle --The land where this voice is heard is boundless Continue Reading

The Last King of America — His impervious moral center came with weighty baggage. Continue Reading

Two Thorntons in War Providence settled on one the usual fate of the other Continue Reading

Dr. Bard in Surgery at Cherry — The initial cut turned into a wholesale excavation Continue Reading

Thanksgiving  The tradition of giving thanks survives as a durable testament to the best of what is us Continue Reading

Seeing Things— When screech-owls cry and ban-dogs howl Continue Reading

Jay Walking — Cruel payoffs and hard lessons did not make him dour or discouraged. Continue Reading

The Stranger  Men fell silent, and women tried to catch their breath, if he wanted them to. Continue Reading

Lively Girl She walked a long, lonely path. Continue Reading 

It Can Happen Here It has before. It is now. Continue Reading

The World, according to Symmes  He had a telescope and too much time on his hands. Continue Reading

And In That Hour The world had cracked open. Continue Reading

Burning by the Bay   Where friendly gals daubed off soot smudges from the latest fire and sat with lonely men who dreamed and dared. Continue Reading

Loving Rachel — There was something like the aroma of earth about her. Continue Reading

The Hickory Hero —  He barked that his men, by the Eternal, would keep their weapons. Continue Reading

Hermes on the Hudson America’s shape-shifting creature of many talents. Continue Reading 

Sally’s SecretHe destroyed her letters. She saved his. Continue Reading

Tecumseh’s FootAnd the Earth did move. Continue Reading

Might-Have-Been Man — The cautionary tale of the other General Lee. Continue Reading 

The Fifth Boat Being rescued and being saved are not the same thing.  Continue Reading

Gibby —  He always showed up where there was free food and drink as long as there was also the chance to be clever. Continue Reading  

Plymouth Adventure  It was an epic adventure that was gloriously improbable and wonderfully hopeless. Such things were these people’s stock in trade. Continue Reading

The Strange Affair of the Bells at Bealings There was no explanation  There never has been. Continue Reading 

“Fawning, Flattery, Duplicity, Hypocrisy They denounced Washington’s elite as incompetent and uncaring.  Continue Reading

Whither Big Apple, Withered — It was the end of an era, the time when the only guard the president had needed was the affection of his fellow citizens. Continue Reading

Monroe Agonistes He perfected the art of being forcefully timid, of moving with indecisive decisiveness, of feeling strongly both ways. Contiue Reading

Retreat to a Reckoning He looked into their haunted eyes and saw something primal. Continue Reading

American Allen — Something awful happened in that room that night. Continue Reading.

America, in the Style of Revere He built things to last forever.  Continue Reading

The Empire at Midnight — A reprise of a post that first appeared several years ago kicks off our remembrance of Paul Revere to mark the bicentennial of his death. Next week, we will look at the man in full, but here is a recounting of his most famous deed. Continue Reading

The Invaluable Ally — An excerpt from David and Jeanne’s forthcoming book! Continue Reading

Dulce et Decorum — When he died on Breed’s Hill, he was only thirty-four, an unlikely revolutionary, as they all were. Continue Reading

Hellfire in the Holy City The people retreating from the heat and light knew that the firefighters would not make any difference. Continue Reading

Music Man The unflappable quiet man made everybody hope that maybe, just maybe, this wasn’t a flop. Continue Reading

Milly — Neither for marriage nor money did she save the terrified white boy that spring afternoon on the banks of the Wakulla. Continue Reading

Rather Respected Than Beloved — He had never been able to shake the nagging feeling that his life was aimless and wasted. Continue Reading 

Celestial Fire — The pleasant young man sprouting like a weed had set himself a challenging standard. Continue Reading

Nightingale — The master huckster Phineas T. Barnum promoted her as the greatest singer of all time. She wasn’t. She was something more. Continue Reading

A Christmas Sampler! — For this year’s Yuletide, a few recollections to divert and, we hope, delight again or anew.  Continue Reading

Thanksgiving — — Something happened at Plymouth that was memorable enough to lay the foundation of a tradition. Continue Reading

Where is There? — Plopped down in a trackless wilderness, they were of that generation’s pocket-protector set, nerds in the modern nomenclature.  Continue Reading

Seventeen Days in June — Congress had done the king a favor by providing a short list of traitors. Continue Reading

Child of Fortune Dawn would give way to dark. Tyrants biding their time in the shadows would smile. Continue Reading

Henry’s Ma The scene with the coins was probably a quaint family legend. What happened was more impressive. Continue Reading

Making Helen Glad And all the trees of the field shall clap their hands Continue Reading

I, Cooper What do a locomotive, a pencil, and a tinkering businessman have to do with one another? Continue Reading

The Swan and the Duckling The swan lived a life of glitter on its surface. The duckling simply lived. Continue Reading

Inauguration Day — Everything everyone had known about the country was set to change. Continue Reading

The Wedding at the White House  A beguiling charm made her popular, not because she was pretty but because she was nice. Continue Reading

In Short, the Magi — Will Porter knew that Christmas for adults is always tinged with sadness. Continue Reading

Extra! Extra! Read All About It: Kringle is Real!  That day he had the annoying chore of writing about Santa Claus. Continue Reading

The Farmer’s Promise He twice astonished the world —  by going home. Continue Reading

“As Near Heaven as We Can Get” —  Within days they exhausted their meager provisions. As it snowed without cease, they began to starve, and then to die. It was a terrifying state of affairs. Continue Reading

The Finest Trick — It took his dying, which was the greatest escape of all, but it also made for Houdini’s finest trick. Continue Reading

Angry Young Hamilton — Like a primed gun, Alexander Hamilton’s temper snapped its trigger. Continue Reading

The Longest Running Show It was said he could whip his weight in wildcats, with a panther added for variety. Continue Reading

The Reign of Witches The actual motive distilled, as it always does, to nothing more than the despicable creed of authoritarians everywhere: “Because we can.” Continue Reading

For as Long as There is Liberty — The recipient might have thought the letter was a bit overdue. Some people thought it was twelve years overdue. Continue Reading

Eighteen Hundred and Starve to Death Everything was either turned upside down or sideways, and the weather lost even its fragile fraction of predictability. Continue Reading 

Seth’s War Only a captain, he was about to become a household name all over the United States. Continue Reading

Barron Pride — He heard exaggerated stories about Stephen Decatur commenting on his dereliction, cowardice, and bad character. James Barron reached for a pen, but he would eventually reach for a pistol. Continue Reading

Before the Little Trip — Two and a half centuries (and counting) were entirely possible for a man too beloved to pass or too mean to expire. Continue Reading

The First President’s Day The stark fact that they didn't want him to have a happy birthday cast a shadow. Continue Reading

A Small Package of Treasures The dance is an old one. Girls know it by instinct; boys learn it by heartache. Continue Reading

An Idea So Shining It ranks with Magna Carta as a great pivot in the affairs of mankind. Continue Reading

The Baby in the Barn The light hurt their eyes, and worse, it frightened them. Continue Reading

Doing Some Things as Well as Others — All the crowds would cheer when Sam popped up, Continue Reading

Holding Darkness Within After sunset, nobody could hear them, or help them.  Continue Reading

Springtime for Bonaparte and History Everyone thinks that Waterloo was his final campaign, but it was merely a prelude to the one he later mounted and won. Continue Reading

Hidden Prompt for a Private Play — His fellow thespians might have considered it a comic episode of delightful misadventures and impossible misunderstandings, except the show would close with a killing. Continue Reading

Lund’s House He never asked for more than his due and was often willing to do with considerably less. Continue Reading

The Wind with No Name — The fate awaiting them in the Florida Keys amounted to a tragedy worthy of Aeschylus. Continue Reading

About Time — To celebrate Seth Thomas’s birthday, we revisit a time before there was time as we know it. Continue Reading

New York’s Indian Summer — Citizens of  New York prided themselves on having seen everything, but they had never seen anything like what was happening in their city that summer of 1790. Continue Reading 

Traveling Man On his birthday, we remember the reasons he came to the United States and partly explain how he came to know Americans better than any other visitor. Continue Reading

The Twenty-Nine Whacks — Nothing remarkable had ever happened to her, until her parents turned up dead. Continue Reading

A Good Man  — All but forgotten except as a figure of fun, he was actually a rare public servant and an even greater rarity in the presidency. Continue Reading

"Dove Mi Piaci”  —  He accomplished what the rest of the world had long thought impossible. It was 200 yers ago this week, beginning on June 30. Continue Reading 

Gad! said the Dad of Yesteryear — There is something curiously modern about Father’s Day that dour forebears would have found peculiar. Continue Reading

Music of the Perpetual Night — Tom Wiggins had the enviable purpose of creating wonder and joy out of the grotesque and inexplicable. Continue Reading

Lucy at Launch — He couldn’t take his eyes off of her. He had never seen anything so wonderful, so perfect. Continue Reading

General Jackson’s Pistols — The supposedly crack shot showed up without a weapon. Continue Reading

Remembering, in This Our Time — We regard those Americans in uniform with appreciation and ask in admiration, “Where do such people come from?” Continue Reading

Bleeding Sumner — At one point Stephen A. Douglas was heard to mutter, “There’s one damned fool who’s going to get himself killed by another damned fool.” Continue Reading

Mrs. Howe’s Mother’s Day — When the nineteenth century was winding down and she had become an old lady, Julia Ward Howe had her palm read by “an expert.” Continue Reading

To Begin the World Over Again — Thomas Paine had written during the Revolution, “We have it in our power to begin the world over again.” That April day, Americans were intent on proving it. Continue Reading

Do Recognize Him Some Where — It was the start of a deep mystery beginning with who the killer was, who he became, and how he seemingly managed to cheat death, after a fashion. Continue Reading

The Empire at Midnight — Revere swung himself into the saddle and spurred the horse to a gallop. It was an hour before midnight. Continue Reading

Awkward Fellow, Sure-Footed — Abraham Lincoln was despondently walking home in the dark when his right foot slipped on a patch of mud and nearly knocked his left leg out from under him. Continue Reading

The Two Generals — At Appomattox 150 years ago, it was a strange reversal of fortune for the two men who met there. Continue Reading

Cast-Iron Man — He was admired him for his talent as well as his dark, rugged good looks. Yet, almost nobody liked him. Continue Reading 

Marble Soul — He believed that with enough time and the right tools, he could show a man’s soul. Continue Reading

Boston and the Bookseller — Achieving a miracle was all in a day’s work for a member of an army that needed one. Continue Reading

Through Some Glasses Darkly — To bark at these men would violate the fundamental rule of command: One must never give an order unless there is the reasonable expectation that it will be obeyed. How deep was this anger and how strong was the tide it pushed? Continue Reading

The Forbes Lesson — By using his rule, John Forbes’s reluctant student would win American independence. Continue Reading

The Best Present — It was his birthday, but the best present was from him to someone he mildly detested. Continue Reading

A Number of Quiet Attentions — When he was younger, when fiddles squeaked and girls giggled and he wasn’t worried about being the George Washington he later felt it necessary to become, he had his moments. Continue Reading

The Other Mr. Adams — He was the patriot who had propagandized the Boston Massacre, helped orchestrate the town’s famous tea party, and had signed the Declaration of Independence when a signature on that document essentially meant a death sentence. He was uneasy about the proposed Constitution. Continue Reading

No One Else Was There — Too many Americans in 1789 took for granted that George Washington would serve as the country’s first president under its new Constitution. Similarly too many Americans now take for granted the very existence of George Washington as a central figure in the country’s founding and its perilous course through its earliest days. Those Americans in 1789 shouldn’t have been so certain; Americans now should be more grateful. Continue Reading

A Tale of Two Thorntons — We have always been struck by another facet of the clash at New Orleans that is marked by one of those strange historical coincidences that happens every now and then. This one concerns the peculiar appearance at two pivotal events of the War of 1812 by two men of the same name, one an eccentric American and the other a decorated British officer. Continue Reading

Anything Seemed Possible . . . America at New Year’s — New Year’s Day is traditionally a time for forward-looking resolutions designed to improve attitudes, habits, and life in general, but in that respect resolutions require a backward look at what is wrong and needs fixing. Americans now are not so different in that human essential from those of previous generations. Continue Reading

The Desperate Journey — This past Sunday, December 14, George Washington died 215 years ago. It’s customary to note the sad anniversary and recall what it meant to the country at the time and for years afterward. We have something to say about Washington’s passing in our forthcoming book, Washington’s Circle: The Creation of the President, but this December we thought it would be interesting to travel back to Washington’s youth when, as a mature but untested 21-year-old, he was sent by the colonial governor of Virginia into the trackless Ohio Country. It was this time of year, and Washington was on an impossible mission. Continue Reading

The Kid Who Cared — Four decades after the American Revolution, one of its most beloved heroes arrived in the United States for his fourth and final visit. Part triumphal tour and part sentimental journey, the Marquis de Lafayette’s travels through every state of the Union (there were twenty-four at the time) reunited him with a dwindling cadre of old friends who, like him, had grown old and frail. Continue Reading

Seeing Santa
( Heidlers Photo Credit: Don Jones, Studio Nine Commercial Photography)  © David and Jeanne Heidler 2020