American History
F4U Corsair: The 400-MPH Fighter the Navy Banned From Its Own Carriers
The Vought F4U Corsair became the first American fighter to exceed 400 mph, yet the U.S. Navy declared it too…
How 9 States Ratified the Constitution Over 4 Who Nearly Killed It
The U.S. Constitution required only nine of thirteen states to ratify it—a legally audacious rule the Framers invented to bypass…
Ken Burns: America Knew About the Holocaust and Chose to Look Away
Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, and Sarah Botstein's six-hour PBS documentary The U.S. and the Holocaust argues that Americans were never…
Best American Revolution Documentaries — and Why It Took So Long to Make Them
The Civil War got Ken Burns and 40 million viewers; the Revolution got classroom reels. Here's why the war that…
Newton Knight Led an Interracial Revolt Against the Confederacy in Mississippi
In 1863, Newton Knight deserted the Confederate Army and organized an interracial guerrilla militia in Mississippi's piney woods — defying…
Real Monuments Men Raced to Save 5 Million Nazi-Stolen Artworks
In a booby-trapped Austrian salt mine, a small Allied unit of curators and art historians made a desperate bid to…
Best Korean War Books to Read Before You Forget It Was Fought
The Korean War killed 36,000 Americans and millions of others, yet vanished from collective memory. These essential history books —…
Great Depression Dust Bowl: When Black Sunday Made Two Catastrophes One
From the stock market crash of 1929 to Black Sunday's eight-thousand-foot dust wall in 1935, the Great Depression fused economic…
Roanoke Colony’s 117 Settlers Didn’t Vanish — Archaeology Shows Where They Went
The Roanoke Colony didn't disappear without a trace — the colonists carved their destination before they left. New archaeological evidence…
Ken Burns’ Vietnam War Doc Unearthed Footage Buried for 50 Years
Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's 18-hour PBS Vietnam War documentary spent a decade recovering military film, classified footage, and Vietnamese…