The Centennial Fire

by Chris Wimmer

The first World’s Fair on American soil ran from May 10 to November 10, 1876. Millions of visitors flocked to Philadelphia to see the show. But two months before it ended, it nearly went up in smoke.… Read the article

War and Reconciliation

by Tom Clavin

Douglas “Pete” Peterson was born in Omaha and raised in Nebraska and Iowa. He enlisted in the U.S. Air Force in 1954, attaining flight pilot and instructor status soon after. He would have a 26-year military career, … Read the article

The Rise of the Weimar Republic

Sparticist Uprising of 1919

by Susan Ronald

In the following excerpt from Hitler’s Aristocrats, author Susan Ronald discusses the Weimar Republic and the political environment that enabled the rise of Hitler and fascism in post-World War I Germany. … Read the article

Crary of the North…and South

by Tom Clavin

 It was on May 3, 1952, that a plane landed on the North Pole.

Specifically, the aircraft was a ski-modified U.S. Air Force C-47. The pilot was 33-year-old William Pershing Benedict, born in Nevada and raised in … Read the article

The Windsors at War

by Alexander Larman

When I finished writing The Crown in Crisis, the book that has become the first part of my Windsors trilogy, I was asked two questions more than any other. Was the Duke of Windsor really a Nazi? … Read the article

Old Houses of the West

by Sandra Dallas

Novelist Sandra Dallas joins us to discuss the inspiration behind her latest book, Where Coyotes Howl, a vivid and deeply affecting ode to the early twentieth-century American West.… Read the article

Bat Back in Dodge City

by Tom Clavin

There were four lawmen who participated in the legendary Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in October 1881—the town marshal, Virgil Earp, and the three men he had deputized, his brothers Wyatt and Morgan, and Doc Holliday. A … Read the article

Heard Round the World: A War Begins

by Jack Kelly

Today is Patriots’ Day in Massachusetts. It commemorates the battles at Lexington and Concord, which occurred on April 19th and touched off the Revolutionary War. It’s also the day of the Boston Marathon, which itself commemorates a … Read the article