Trying to put jazz into words can be tricky, like setting James Joyce to music. But Texas author, poet, and jazz expert Dave Oliphant has embraced a novel way to do so that is adventurous, just a little odd, and entirely satisfying.... Read More

The literal translation of the Japanese word banzai is “ten thousand years.” But the Japanese use it like the French use vive or the English “long live.” To think that the Japanese in 1934, amid crumbling relations with America,... Read More

The 1950s signaled the last Age of Innocence in America. Curiously, one of the things we were the most innocent about was also the most deadly—the atomic bomb. As Michon Mackedon reveals in meticulous detail, our innocence about the... Read More

Unlike some religions, golf has three Meccas. The first is Scotland’s St. Andrews, often the host of the British Open; the second is Augusta National, in Georgia, home of the Masters; and the third, running along the beautiful... Read More

Precisely 150 years ago, on March 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln took the oath of office as president of a hopelessly divided United States. Nine southern states had already seceded, and in only a month Fort Sumter would fall to the... Read More

On June 25, 1876, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and 2,000 Lakota Sioux and Cheyenne wiped out George Custer and his Seventh Cavalry at the Battle of Little Big Horn. It was a stunning and absolutely unforgettable event in American history.... Read More

The hundreds of men, women, and sadly, children staring back at the reader from the pages of "Where We Worked" have three things in common—they do not smile, their thin and stringy bodies evoke hard work and hard times (seventy-hour... Read More

On that bright autumn morning in 2001, Scott Malcomson had things going his way. He had a prestigious job as assistant editor of the New York Times’ op-ed section, a successful wife, two young children, and a Brooklyn home with a great... Read More