August/September 1982

A once laughable pursuit is now seen by historians as a serious way to explore where we came from and who we are

A contemporary artist re-creates two and a half centuries of the life of a North Carolina county

When it comes to genealogical pride, there’s nothing to equal the modest satisfaction of a slightly threadbare, socially impregnable New Englander. A canny guide to the subtle distinctions of America’s most rarefied society.

An Interview With Archibald MacLeish

In reconstructing the past, Old Sturbridge Village is doing a lot more than selling penny candy and buggy rides. Struggling for verisimilitude, curators are raising scrawny chickens, trudging behind 150-year-old plows—and keeping pesticides out of the orchards.

A collection of little-known early-twentieth-century photographs of St. Louis recalls the author’s unfashionably happy childhood

How a young New York society matron named Alice Shaw dazzled English royalty with her extraordinary embouchure

In 1984 Los Angeles will once again play host to the Summer Olympics. It’s got to be easier that the first time. That was just fifty years ago, when, in the teeth of the Great Depression, a group of local boosters boldly set about planning

There’s a corner of every Americans heart that is reserved for a cartoon cat. Its name might be Garfield, Sylvester, Fritz, or Felix. But there will never be another Krazy.

She was the last major American warship sunk during World War II, and her sinking was the single worst open-sea disaster in our naval history. How could it have happened?

Once you’ve discovered fire, you have to keep it from burning you. This is how it was managed before the safety match.