Texas

Lois Burkhalter | April 1965

George Catlin painted a moving portrait of friend Joseph Chadwick just before his friend's untimely death in the Texas Revolution

The Storming of the Alamo

Charles Ramsdell Jr. | February 1961

None of its defenders survived, so that legends obscure their fate. But the facts do no dishonor to these beleaguered men, sworn to fight on until the end “at the peril of our lives, liberties and fortunes”

Pioneers In Petticoats

Helena Huntington Smith | February 1959

Legend says the frontier was “hell on women,” but the ladies claim they had the time of their lives

Gusher at Spindletop

William A. Owens | June 1958

The story of the first great Texas oil well, which ushered in a new century and a new age, as remembered by participants

Texas, as everyone knows, is synonymous with oil. But how many know, at least in any detail, the story of the fabulous strike which ushered in the age of the Lone Star billionaire?

Border Warrior

Edward S. Wallace | June 1958

Spare, frail, and plagued by old wounds, Ranald Mackenzie was still “the finest Indian-fighting cavalryman of them all”

On the morning of January 20, 1889, the New York Sunday Times carried an account of the elaborate preparations for the Yale Junior Promenade.

The Ballad Of Cynthia Ann

Donald Culross Peattie | April 1956

Both grimness and beauty touch this haunting fragment of America’s past

This is an old tale, and not a pretty one; it is a true tale, a real “Western,” although it wouldn’t go on TV. It sounds to me like a ballad—the ballad of Cynthia Ann.

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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.