The Third Term
On the evening of July 16, 1940, Thomas D. (for Democrat) Garry sat sweating in front of a microphone in the basement of Chicago...
Sunday Evening at the Movies
Imagine a heat wave — one of the worst in American history. We are back in the torrid summer of 1934, the third weekend...
The Dragon Lady Conquers America, Part 1
Cornell Newton Shelton, known as C.N., stood freezing in the pre-dawn darkness of Chengtu, China. Shelton, an American bush pilot, preferred jockeying planes around...
New Year’s Day 1929: Which Way the Future?
The huge crowd gathered in Times Square on December 31, 1928, did not know that the “New Era” of eternal good times, proclaimed by...
POW Exposition
Lieutenant Colonel Ross Greening and his fellow ex-prisoners of war were crushed. They had collected 56 crates of American ingenuity–POW handicraft–while waiting at their...
Midnight Ride Through Georgia: Passing the GI Bill
From the conception of the “GI Bill of Rights” in late 1943 to its spring passage in the Senate (50 to 0) and House...
The Lindberghs’ Summer Excursion Part 1
By 1931 Charles Lindbergh had acquired the aura of the world’s greatest aviator and hero. He had also acquired a young wife, and one...
The Sound of an Era
On the evening of August 21, 1935, a dilapidated bus carrying the Benny Goodman Band pulled up in front of Los Angeles’s Palomar Ballroom....
The Middle of an Era
Sometimes the best place to start is in the middle. By the Spring of 1937, half of this fascinating era had already unfolded and...
How Dry We Were: The Repeal of Prohibition
During a 1928 congressional hearing on national prohibition, Pauline Morton Sabin, niece of the Morton Salt founder and wife of the chairman of the...