Mapping

Popular history tells us that America was named after the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci. But could there be other, perhaps even older origins for the name?

The fam

The New Map of Empire

Max Edelson | Special Issue - George Washington Prize 2018

After the French and Indian War, Britain reimagined North America and created hundreds of maps to bring about that vision after gaining vast new territories

During negotiations to end the Seven Years’ War, Great Britain’s diplomats used the leverage that came with conquests in Canada, India, Africa, and the West Indies to gain large territorial cessions from France and Spain.

The Treasure of Alnwick Castle

Elizabeth C. Cumming, William P. Cumming | August 1969

Behind the ancient towers of the Duke of Northumberland's home are the unique Revolutionary War battle maps of the general who saved the British from disaster at Lexington

The Treasure of Alnwick Castle

Elizabeth C. Cumming, William P. Cumming | August 1969

Behind the ancient towers of the Duke of Northumberland's home are the unique Revolutionary War battle maps of the general who saved the British from disaster at Lexington

A Man to Match the Mountains

Alvin M. Josephy Jr. | October 1960

To David Thompson—who died blind, penniless, and bypassed by history—we owe our first knowledge of the American continent’s rugged Northwest

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Featured Authors

Acheson, Dean

Dean Acheson (1893-1971) was an attorney and statesman who served as Secretary of State from 1949 to 1953 under President Harry Truman. A key architect of the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan, Acheson stressed the importance of multilateral organizations in the fight against totalitarianism. Prior to his service in the Truman Administration, Acheson clerked for Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, worked at Washington law firm Covington & Burling, and served as Undersecretary of the Treasury for one year under President Franklin Roosevelt.

Ambrose, Stephen E.

Stephen E. Ambrose (1936-2002) was a historian and professor who wrote on military history, presidential history, and American expansion and foreign policy. Ambrose has been praised for his biographies of Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon, and for helping to galvanize interest in World War II.

Becker, Elizabeth

Elizabeth Becker is an award-winning journalist and the author of several books. Her history When The War Was Over: Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge won accolades from the Robert F. Kennedy book award, while her recent biography of female conflict journalists You Don’t Belong Here: How Three Women Rewrote the Story of War won the 2022 Sperber Book Prize and Harvard’s Goldsmith Book Prize. She is also the author of America’s Vietnam War: A Narrative History for young adults.

Blight, David W.

David W. Blight is the Class of 1954 Professor of American History and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance & Abolition at Yale University. Recently, Blight has written A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Narratives of Emancipation, and Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, which won the Bancroft Prize, the Abraham Lincoln Prize, and the Frederick Douglass Prize.

Brinkley, Douglas

Douglas Brinkley, a distinguished professor of history at Rice University and Contributing Editor of American Heritage, has written more than 20 books, most recently The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America (Harper 2009) and The Reagan Diaries (HarperCollins 2007). Brinkley earned his B.A from Ohio State University University in 1982, and his Ph.D. from Georgetown University in 1989.