Trusted Writing on History, Travel, and American Culture Since 1949
Bruce Catton
The founding editor of American Heritage was the preeminent Civil War historian of the last century, and taught generations of writers how to write narrative history.
Bruce Catton w
We celebrate one of America's greatest historians with an anthology of his writing.
Notes about the famous historian and American Heritage editor
For decades, Yale history professor David Blight, an award-winning author and a preeminent scholar of the Civil War, has studied the legacy of Bruce Catton, the historian/writer who significantly shaped our understanding of the Civil War by bringing it into exhilarating, memorable relief thro
Like the nation it covers, American Heritage was revolutionary at its birth. And like that nation’s story, ours is a real cliffhanger.
It is rare for any magazine to live half a century.
WAITING FOR THE MORNING TRAIN is Bruce Catton’s memoir of his boyhood in a small Michigan town named Benzonia—an etymologically suspect word that is supposed to mean “good air.
Oliver Jensen, who was for many years the editor of this magazine and who worked with Bruce Catton from its first publication in 1954, has written this account of what it was like to have him as a colleague. We are pleased to run it here as a tribute to our late distinguished senior editor, together with some side comments from others who enjoyed the privilege of “working with Bruce Catton.”
Ernest Hemingway and His World
by Anthony Burgess Charles Scribner’s Sons, 144 pages, photographs, $10.95
Like most authentic folk creations, baseball is deeply and obscurely rooted in the past and its moment of origin is cloaked in legend. There are innumerable threads that go back to the beginning of things, but nobody can follow them all the way.
A FAMOUS HISTORIAN RECALLS THE COUNTRY WHERE HE GREW UP
We lived in Indian summer and mistook it for spring. Winter lay ahead just when we thought June was on the way. The school, the town, and the people connected with both were coming to an end that seemed to be a beginning.
THIRD OF FOUR INSTALLMENTS A FAMOUS HISTORIAN RECALLS THE COUNTRY WHERE HE GREW UP
This is how it was in the old days. A family that wanted to go from here to there went by railroad train because there was no other way to do it.
SECOND OF FOUR INSTALLMENTS
A FAMOUS HISTORIAN RECALLS THE COUNTRY WHERE HE GREW UP
According to the Bible, a city that is set upon a hill cannot be hid.
A FAMOUS HISTORIAN RECALLS THE COUNTRY WHERE HE GREW UP
First there was the ice; two miles high, hundreds of miles wide, and many centuries deep. It came down from the darkness at the top of the world, and it hung down over the eaves, and our Michigan country lay along the line of the overhang.
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