History

The field was open ground, flat and bare, with no cover except for a single apple tree standing in the middle of the grass. A 22-year-old woman crouched behind it, a Sten gun in her hands, and fired at the soldiers advancing across the road. She reloaded. She fired again. Behind her, across the open … Read more

The corridor of the Shelborne Hotel was dim, the kind of modest light that softened edges and blurred faces. On that June night in 1952, a woman lay dying there, struck down not by an army, not by the Gestapo she had so often outwitted, but by the hand of a single man. She was … Read more

In 1977, a low-budget southern comedy about an illegal beer run opened in theaters with almost no one in Hollywood expecting anything from it. By the end of the year, it had grossed an astonishing $127 million, making it the second-highest-grossing film of the year behind only Star Wars. The film was Smokey and the … Read more

The winter of 1856 had frozen the Ohio River in sections, and for Margaret Whitfield that ice was the only road to freedom she would ever see. She gathered her husband Robert and their children and moved quietly through the darkness of late January, stepping onto the frozen surface that separated Boone County, Kentucky, from … Read more

The young soldier beside her smiled, adjusting his own sights as if this were nothing more than another drill. The next moment, a shot ripped through the air. He collapsed, blood spreading across the snow beneath him. Lyudmila Pavlichenko froze, staring at the body. The grin, the youth, the way the frost had sparkled in … Read more

At its peak in the late 1970s, Straw Hat Pizza ran roughly 450 restaurants from Southern California up into Oregon and Washington. In its home state, it was the undisputed king of the family pizza parlor, a place built around Friday nights, birthday parties, and the warm, dim glow of a silent movie flickering on … Read more

The mess sergeant at Fort Benning in 1953 had a budget of seventy-eight cents a head and a line of two hundred hungry men waiting on him. He worked the steam tables like a man running a machine, and when the last tray came back, it came back clean. Every single one. The old stories … Read more

In the green English countryside stood Sutton Place, a Tudor manor with seventy-two rooms, manicured gardens, and walls built to withstand a siege. It was a residence fit for a king, and in the 1970s, it housed one. J. Paul Getty was the oil monarch, the wealthiest private citizen in the history of the world, … Read more

In 1959, a company in Philadelphia released a stereo amplifier that would change the American listening experience. The Dynaco ST-70 sold as a kit for $99. 95, and it delivered performance that challenged equipment costing three times as much. It was the product of a philosophy that had guided Dynaco from its founding: good electronics … Read more