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Great Americans
Great Americans: Niall Ferguson on Henry Kissinger’s Very American Life
In what other country could a penniless Jewish refugee become the secretary of state?
Niall Ferguson
Great Americans, Chosen by You
As our countdown to July 4 nears its end, we handed the pen to our readers.
The Free Press
Great Americans: Frederick Douglass Believed in America More Than America
The most famous Independence Day address in history is also the most misunderstood. The former slave wasn’t attacking the founders—he was holding…
David A. Price
Great Americans: David Mamet on America’s First Pop Poet
Forget Walt Whitman. America’s greatest bard wrote songs.
David Mamet
Great Americans: The Man Who Put Evil on Trial
Robert H. Jackson grew up pitching hay in upstate New York and became the most morally serious jurist America has ever produced. Today, the America that…
Matthew Walther
Great Americans: Stephen Sondheim, Comic Genius
His musicals draw a direct line between the slapstick comedy of vaudeville and the ambivalence of high modernism—and they could only have grown out of…
Scott Wheeler
Great Americans: Muhammad Ali Walked the Walk
He was the greatest heavyweight who ever lived. But his most courageous fights had nothing to do with boxing.
Peter Richmond
Great Americans: The Strange Dependence of an Independent Woman
Thrust into running her family’s South Carolina plantations at 16, Eliza Lucas Pinckney forged a far more independent life than what we might imagine…
Kathleen DuVal
Great Americans: The Tough Bastard Who Turned Baseball Into the National Game
A true-blue American nutcase, Ty Cobb was the best ballplayer who ever lived and the first true antihero in sports.
Will Rahn
Great Americans: Matthew Henson at the North Pole
In Arlington National Cemetery, two monuments—one white, one black—tell dueling stories about the first explorers to reach the top of the world.
Amanda Bellows
Great Americans: The Man Who Built America’s Stonehenge
Harvey Fite spent 40 years sculpting a seven-acre masterpiece from an abandoned quarry near Woodstock. He had no collaborators, no blueprints, and no…
Josh Code
Great Americans: The Godmother of Management
At a time when American factories outnumbered office buildings, Mary Parker Follett invented the ideas that made the modern workplace. Her critique of…
Philip K. Howard
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