2023

As a young man, Theodore Roosevelt struggled through a brutal winter on a cattle ranch in the Dakota Territory. The adventure launched a love affair with the western U.S.

Kate Mullany's former home in Troy, New York honors one of the earliest women's labor unions that sought fair pay and safe working conditions.

The president worried that his grandson had “an unconquerable indolence of temper, and a dereliction, in fact, to all study.”

One of the defining images of World War II continues to be trailed by controversy.

Muir struggled for decades to create and protect Yosemite National Park, and helped launch the American environmental movement.

In 1947, former Secretary of War Henry Stimson recalled the agonizing decision to use the bomb: "This deliberate, premeditated destruction was our least abhorrent choice."

U.S. military leaders drew up elaborate plans to invade Japan, with estimates of American casualties ranging as high as two to four million, given the terrible losses at Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

American leaders called the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki our 'least abhorrent choice,' but there were alternatives to the nuclear attacks.

As defeat became inevitable in the summer of 1945, Japan's government and the Allies could not agree on surrender terms, especially regarding the future of Emperor Hirohito and his throne. 

In this special issue, we look from multiple viewpoints at the conventional and atomic attacks on Japanese cities to end the Asia-Pacific war.