August/September 1980

When The Great Earthquake struck New England, learned men blamed everything from God’s wrath to an overabundance of lightning rods in Boston. Two hundred and twenty-five years later, geologists are at last discovering the true causes.

It’s our most important, profitable, and adaptable crop—the true American staple. But where did it come from?

Americans first learned to read to save their souls, then to govern themselves. Now the need is not so clear.

When old James E. Taylor exercised his powers of near-total recall to set down memories of the Shenandoah campaign, he left us a unique record of a very new, very hazardous profession

With astonishing tenacity, the people of the rich river-mouth region of the Mississippi have remained what and where they are through two and a half centuries

It was fifty years ago that Bobby Jones won his Grand Slam, making him the only man who ever has—or probably ever will—conquer the “Impregnable Quadrilateral” of golf

“They tell me I have a beautiful boat,” said the challenger, Sir Thomas Lipton. “What I want is a boat to lift the Cup.”

The restaurant that changed the way we dine—

American Heritage interviews Lowell Thomas, the journalist whom Damon Runyon described as “the beau ideal of the radio fraternity, first for his complete artistry and second for his personality.