History

In January 1948, on Riverside Drive in New York City, wrecking balls began smashing through the walls of what had once been one of the most extravagant homes ever built in America. The Charles M. Schwab Mansion, a 75-room palace of imported marble, bronze, and mahogany completed in 1906, was being torn down to make … Read more

The name appears without ceremony, set in the middle of lines that never tremble. Dred Scott. Two words, and the entire administrative apparatus arranges itself around him like a carefully oiled trap. The clerks do not ask who he is. They ask whom he belongs to. They do not record a life. They assign a … Read more

On a December night in 1763, a band of armed men slipped through the darkness toward a small Indian settlement near Lancaster, Pennsylvania. They had ridden hard from the frontier settlements of Paxton and Donegal, driven by years of grief and rage. Their target was Conestoga, a quiet village of peaceful, friendly Iroquois Indians who … Read more

On the morning of March 30, 1854, the first arrow came down out of a clear sky and struck the ground six inches from Trooper Peter Welden’s left boot. It buried itself in the wet earth and stood there quivering. Welden did not move. A second arrow came, then a third, then so many that … Read more

In 1943, on Guadalcanal, a marine traded a good knife for a single can of peaches. That was how badly the men wanted real food. The popular image of Marines storming a beach on steak and eggs had nothing to do with what the Corps actually fed its men. The truth was stranger, and it … Read more

By early July 1863, the Confederate garrison at Vicksburg was on the verge of collapse. For weeks, Union troops under Major General Ulysses S. Grant had encircled the city on the Mississippi River, cutting off its supply lines and hammering it with artillery from land and water. Inside, roughly thirty thousand Confederate soldiers were reduced … Read more

The midwife saw the child and reached for fire. It was 1783, in Bengal, and the boy born that day carried a second head fused upside down atop his own. The sight of him drove the woman to try to end his life before it truly began. The flames burned him. They did not kill … Read more

The last call came through a lawyer’s office in Phoenix. Kristen Nelson wanted to see her children. She said she was sober now, that she had things to explain. Tracy Nelson called her brothers immediately. Matthew’s first instinct was no. Gunner wavered. They had built lives without her, careers without her approval. But Tracy argued … Read more

In October 1907, a well-dressed woman sat in the Baltimore Inn, one of Chicago’s fashionable cafes, in the company of a prominent businessman. Near her, placed openly on the table, lay a large alligator-skin pocketbook. Lieutenant James V. Ling noticed it at once. He had been investigating a robbery at the Beck household on South … Read more