Editor’s Note: Nicholas Guyatt is a historian, the author of six books, and a lecturer in modern history at the University of Cambridge. His most recent book is The Hated Cage: An American Tragedy in Britain’s Most Terrifying Prison, from which he adapted this essay.
DELANO, CALIFORNIA — 1965 — Singing, marching, and chanting “Viva La Huelga!,” two thousand farm workers picket the grape fields of California's Central Valley. Some have worked those fields for decades. Others are children earning 80 cents an hour. Will someone take up their cause?
Editor’s Note: We asked Mike Purdy, a historian and author of 101 Presidential Insults: What They Really Thought About Each Other — and What It Means to Us, to share with us some of his favorite insults that U.S. Presidents threw at each other. Mr. Purdy is also the author of the recently published book Presidential Friendships: How They Changed History.
Editor’s Note: Steve Wiegard is the author of ten books, mostly on American history, and he was the longtime senior writer at the San Francisco Chronicle and San Diego Evening Tribune. He adapted the following essay from his most recent book, 1876 – Year of the Gun: The Year Bat, Wyatt, Custer, Jesse and the Two Bills (Buffalo and Wild) created the Wild West, and Why It’s Still With Us.
It is uncommon for American presidents to have their post-presidency pronouncements remembered. Yet the most oft-quoted words spoken by Theodore Roosevelt come from a speech he gave after he left office. In 1910, after completing a safari in Africa, Roosevelt had been invited to speak at the Sorbonne. The speech included a passage that has been quoted and cited widely in the century that followed.
Editor’s Note: This summer, Jim Thorpe’s records at the 1912 Olympic Games were finally restored, 110 years too late. He lost them after it was discovered he had violated the Olympics’ strict amateurism regulations at the time; he had briefly been paid $25 a week to play minor league baseball.
American Heritage seeks a Managing Editor to work on a wide range of tasks including article acquisition, tracking content in the works, line editing, illustration research, posting articles on the website, writing captions and callouts, writing news items and blog posts, and our Facebook page and other social media. The Managing Editor will also help with its sister publication, Invention & Technology, the only popular magazine of the history of innovation and invention. He or she will report directly to the Editor-in-Chief, Edwin S. Grosvenor.
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This position is NOT remote-only. It requires at least occasional meetings in our Washington, DC office near Dupont Circle. The successful candidate will have at least several years of experience working in serious journalism, and will have some familiarity with American political, military, and cultural history.
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Editor's Note: In memory of David McCullough, we reprint here the first article he wrote after he joined the staff of American Heritage. Expanding this essay on his own time over the next two years, McCullough published his first book, The Johnstown Flood, in 1968.
David McCullough recalled the moments that got him started “in the history business.” In 1965, he came across a spectacular photograph of the unveiling of the Statue of Liberty. Showing it to the editors of American Heritage, he was invited to write an article which was published in the February issue the following year as “Hail, Liberty!”