Richard F. Snow

Richard F. Snow worked 37 years at American Heritage Magazine, serving as Editor-in-Chief for seventeen of them. Born in New York City, he got a summer job as a mail boy at American Heritage during high school, and after studying English and history at Columbia College, returned to work at the magazine full-time. Snow is the author of several books, most recently A Measureless Peril, about the Battle of the Atlantic. Previously, he authored The Iron Road: A Portrait of American Railroading and Coney Island: A Postcard Visit to the City of Fire, as well as two novels, Freelon Starbird and The Burning, and a narrative poem, "The Funny Place." Snow has also consulted for historical motion pictures—among them Glory—and documentaries, including the Burns brothers’ The Civil War and Ken Burns’s World War II documentary. He revisited Coney one more time to work with Ric Burns on the PBS American Experience feature Coney Island, whose screenplay he wrote.

Articles by this Author

An Invitation, April/May 2007 | Vol. 58, No. 2

1964, October 2006 | Vol. 57, No. 5

Mister Thorndike, February/March 2006 | Vol. 57, No. 1

The Real Thing, November/December 2005 | Vol. 56, No. 6

Oliver Jensen, August/September 2005 | Vol. 56, No. 4

1914–2005

My Brooklyn, August/September 2005 | Vol. 56, No. 4

Voices Of Authority, June/July 2005 | Vol. 56, No. 3

Zeebrugge And A Shau, February/March 2005 | Vol. 56, No. 1

Underrated, October 2004 | Vol. 55, No. 5

Anniversary, August/September 2004 | Vol. 55, No. 4

War Memorials, June/July 2004 | Vol. 55, No. 3

Old News, February/March 2004 | Vol. 55, No. 1

Salt And Fire, October 2003 | Vol. 54, No. 5

Gratitude, August/September 2003 | Vol. 54, No. 4

The Funny Car, June/July 2003 | Vol. 54, No. 3

Who Let The Dogs Out? We Did!, March 2003 | Vol. 54, No. 1

Three Decades Ago This Magazine Launched a Durable American Trend

History And Hope, November/December 2002 | Vol. 53, No. 6

Value Judgments, October 2002 | Vol. 53, No. 5

At Gettysburg, August/September 2002 | Vol. 53, No. 4

The Devil’s Own Day, November/December 2001 | Vol. 52, No. 8

Unforgiven, October 2001 | Vol. 52, No. 7

Military-historical Complex, September 2001 | Vol. 52, No. 6

Pieces Of The Past, July/August 2001 | Vol. 52, No. 5

Goodbye To All That, May 2001 | Vol. 52, No. 3

Railroad Country, February/March 2001 | Vol. 52, No. 1

Why History Now?, December 2000 | Vol. 51, No. 8

Forgotten War, November 2000 | Vol. 51, No. 7

George Washington Vs. The Wehrmacht, October 2000 | Vol. 51, No. 6

Fragments Of A War, September 2000 | Vol. 51, No. 5

A Man Of The Century, July/August 2000 | Vol. 51, No. 4

"WEB ONLY STORIES" BY THIS CONTRIBUTOR

Letter From The Editor: Zeebrugge and A Shau

The port of Bruges lies eight miles inland from the Belgian coast, served by a canal that opens to the sea at Ostend and Zeebrugge. In the bitter spring of 1918 Bruges Harbor teemed with German destroyers and U-boats that regularly came out to continue their years-long effort to starve Britain into…

Letter From The Editor: Underrated

It’s back again, and six years of experience has taught me that it’s going to make some readers angry. Others will tell us it’s their favorite feature. Save for a now-distant cover story about Jane Fonda, nothing we’ve published has elicited such vehement responses as “Overrated & Underrated.”…

Letter From The Editor: Anniversary

September 11, 2001, was my daughter’s first day of kindergarten—a new school a long subway ride up the spine of Manhattan. Rebecca’s inaugural school day consisted of half an hour meeting other children, followed by a four-hour walk home. When the school opened again, her teacher told me, “She’s…

Letter From The Editor: War Memorials

One dour morning early this March I had to drive to eastern Pennsylvania. I’d heard that a patch of the sometime steel town of Bethlehem had been spruced up and now was a bower of postindustrial charm, so after my errand I made a detour and headed over to see it. I drove up a hill and across a…

Letter From The Editor: Old News

The father of my colleague Carla Davidson was a newspaperman back in the racy violence of the Front Page days; he was also an accomplished novelist and television writer and a historian of wide interests. But he never could bring himself to care much about what he called “short-pants history,” by…

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