March 2023

Editor’s Note: Jim Koch founded the Boston Beer Company in 1984 and is widely considered a founding father of the American craft-brewing movement. He is the author of  Quench Your Own Thirst: Business Lessons Learned Over a Beer or Two, from which this essay was adapted.

In honor of the 50th anniversary of the U.S. departure from Vietnam, we have compiled links to some of the many fascinating articles we've published on the subject over the years. We have an extraordinary archive of writing by leading authors which I hope our readers can sample.

Please pass this collection on to any friends who might be interested.

First Blood in Vietnam, by Stanley Karnow

A magazine reporter covered the first American deaths in Vietnam, unaware that the soon-to-explode war would mark America’s awakening to maturity.    

The recent failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank were shocking, but shouldn’t surprise. Even a quick look at banking history reveals that failures are as American as apple pie. Some 565 banks have closed since 2000, according to the FDIC, and over a thousand saving and loans failed during the crisis of the 1980s and early 1990s. 

In 2018, Congress removed bank regulations that were put in place in the wake of the financial crisis of 2007-8. These regulations had required banks to undergo annual “stress tests” to assess their resiliency in scenarios such as rising interest rates, to maintain adequate levels of capital and liquidity to meet obligations in the event of unforeseen circumstances.

Editor's Note: Richard Haass was a senior diplomat in the State Department and has been president of the Council on Foreign Relations since 2003. A frequent television commentator, Haass has written over a dozen books including the recently published The Bill Of Obligations: The Ten Habits Of Good Citizens, from which this essay was adapted.

There is an immortal image of Marilyn Monroe that lives in the public mind. We recall the sensuous platinum blonde with lips painted bright red, the iconic beauty mark perfectly situated on her left cheek, and she's wearing a chic low-cut dress that shows off her gorgeous figure and legs. More than six decades after her death at the age of thirty-six, this photo remains omnipresent. 

A few years ago, we noticed something curious: While every state in the U.S. has a historical society — as do most counties, cities, and towns —  there was no national society. 

So, we decided to do something about this deficiency. Last April 26, we created The National Historical Society, a new 501(c)3 incorporated in our nation's capital. This week, we finished a new website for the Society.

The mission of the new Society is simple: to help millions of Americans learn more about our nation’s story.

On the first weekend in March, 1965, TV images of brutal violence by the Alabama state police against civil rights demonstrators shocked the nation. Wielding batons and dogs, police killed one demonstrator and brutally beat many others as a few hundred otherwise-silent Black Americans marched peacefully across the Edmund Pettus Bridge on U.S. highway 80, heading from Selma to the Alabama capitol. Their offense? Demanding the right to vote guaranteed by the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution.