As Ned Blackhawk points out in his National Book Award-winning “The Rediscovery of America,” most histories of the United States’ origin story are anchored by Europeans: “Puritans governing a commonwealth in a wilderness; pioneers settling western frontiers; and European immigrants huddled upon Atlantic shores.” In that book, and throughout his scholarly career, Blackhawk has attempted … Read more
Annette Gordon-Reed is a historian and a professor at Harvard Law School. She won the 2008 National Book Award and the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for “The Hemingses of Monticello,” which extended some of the work commenced in her pathbreaking “Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy.” She joined us the morning after the election … Read more
The incarceration of 120,000 Japanese-Americans, including children, labelled enemies during World War II is an historical experience that has traumatised, and galvanised, the Japanese-American community over the decades. For George Takei, who portrayed Hikaru Sulu aboard the USS Enterprise in Star Trek, it is a story he is determined to keep telling every opportunity he … Read more
On an elegant residential block in Brooklyn Heights stands what once may have been the most famous church in America. Plymouth Church, on Orange Street, was founded in 1847 with just twenty-one members. The New York businessmen who established the church, practicing Congregationalists, wanted it to grow, so they offered the job of minister to … Read more
The U.S. system was also unique in that no other country required a model to accompany a patent application. The reasons why soon became clear. As early as the eighteen-thirties, the collection had outgrown the Patent Office’s cramped headquarters at the former Blodgett’s Hotel. In 1836, a fire destroyed at least seven thousand models, but, … Read more
