October 1998

A ranking of the forty wealthiest Americans of all time (Surprise: Only three of them are alive today)

. . . and the birth of the railroad revolution in America. A mystery solved.

A gracious antebellum city of stern-wheelers and cotton money; a restless, violent city with a hot grain of genius at its heart; a city of calamity, desolation, and rebirth; a city that changed the way the whole world hears music. It’s all the same city, and it is this year’s Great American Place. Thomas Childers answers a summons to Memphis, Tennessee.

Memphis, the home of the blues, was a college of learning for me.

The fate of the codfish suggests that collectivism on the ownership level is as destructive as anywhere else

The great storyteller and famed historian lent authority and good advice to our aspiring magazine