December 1982

The most influential economist in the United States talks about prudence, productivity, and the pursuit of liquidity in the light of the past

One man measures his life-span against the length of recorded history and finds tidings of comfort and hope

Conjectural or speculative history can be a silly game, as in “What if the Roman legions had machine guns?” But this historian argues that to enlarge our knowledge and understanding it sometimes makes very good sense to ask …

He loved women so much he painted wings on them. After years of neglect, he is now being appreciated.

A soldier remembers the freezing, fearful retreat down the Korean Peninsula after the Chinese armies smashed across the border

Here is the federal government’s own picture history of our times—and it tells us more than you might think

But was Louis Moreau Gottschalk America’s first musical genius or simply the purveyor of sentimental claptrap?

How the colossus of the “social expression industry” always manages to say it better than you do

From Germany and Switzerland, farmer-potters transplanted their skills to Pennsylvania and produced a distinctive ceramic found nowhere else in America

How the mistress of the plantation became a slave

In the thirties the WPA decided it would be good to know just what the insides of Victorian homes, offices, and stores had looked like. The artist-historian Perkins Harnly created a sumptuous record.