How, and why, did the language of love and romance become the language of war?

It might have been old age that dimmed his memory and robbed him of a garrulousness that likely tired his grandchildren. It might have been the diffidence of a habitual loser unaccustomed to telling officialdom something good about himself. It might have been a posttraumatic reluctance to delve too deeply into old memories of terror and pain.

By the summer of 1881, news of the recently discovered Luray Caverns in Virginia’s famed Shenandoah Valley had spread throughout […]

Hinman’s book was about the dirty, miserable, and joyful minutiae of soldier life in the Union army.

Indiana’s Infidel Congressman Locals refer to southwestern Indiana as “The Pocket,” but politicians know this region by a more ominous […]

Presented as part of the special Politics Issue

We ought to be asking ourselves what kind of democracy we want and what kind of democracy a particular leader or movement is offering.

Almost every child in the United States learns who John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, and Andrew Jackson […]

Under the specter of witches’ meetings said to be aimed at destroying the village ministry, an unprecedented and momentous claim, the New England tradition of legal caution towards witchcraft accusations completely evaporated.

Weaving the Wicked Web of Antebellum Religion and Politics “Douglas is a cuning dog & the devil is on his […]

In violation of his own rule “ that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others,” Twain’s writings are full of the walking dead.