By the winter of 1907, Clara Huitt had delivered more babies in Pike Hollow than any doctor who had ever attempted the mountain roads. For twenty-three years she had been the primary midwife for the hollow and three neighboring valleys, and the Breathitt County clerk’s office held records of sixty-three births attributed to her work, … Read more

On the afternoon of April 28th, 1945, a partisan operating under the name Colonel Valerio arrived at a farmhouse near the western shore of Lake Como. His real name was Walter Audisio, and he had come to carry out an execution that would close twenty-three years of fascist rule in Italy. He shot Benito Mussolini … Read more

In the spring of 1894, a man who had lost his right arm at the Battle of Shiloh sat down with the elders of the Hopi people and wrote down what they told him about what lay beneath the Grand Canyon. His name was John Wesley Powell, and he had already done what no white … Read more

The spring of 1962 arrived in Harlem heavy, dragging the humid scent of blooming magnolia from the parks and mixing it with diesel exhaust, roasted peanuts, and hot asphalt. The brutal winter had finally broken, and the city was exhaling. Wool coats came off, lightweight suits went on, and the young men on the corners … Read more

The morning light had not yet reached the narrow pass when the runner came gasping up to Leonidas. The king of Sparta had just received the news that would end everything: a Persian force was moving behind him, guided around the mountain during the night. The pass was no longer a fortress. It had become … Read more

The car pulled up outside a house in Ozone Park, Queens, on a summer morning in June 1988. The driver was Anthony Ruggiano Jr. , the son of a Gambino crime family man. The passenger climbing in was family too: Frank Boccia, twenty-six years old, married to Anthony’s sister, father of a baby daughter. Anthony … Read more

He was born at the height of Europe’s power, an archduke of the House of Habsburg, a grand admiral of the fleet, and a man who was openly offered a crown. Yet he turned his back on his imperial dynasty, refused the throne, and chose to die an ordinary citizen in a country that had … Read more

A Saturday afternoon in 1967: an eleven-year-old boy flips a propeller with his finger, the engine catches on the third try, and the backyard is suddenly full of noise. The dog dives under the porch. The propeller blurs. Castor oil mist hits his face like a warm hand. His father stands three feet behind him, … Read more

The train was already moving when she leaned out of the window, one hand gripping the frame, the other raised in a wave toward the platform. Below her stood a man and a five-year-old girl, the husband and the daughter she was leaving behind in Berlin. The night before, Marlene Dietrich had been given the … Read more