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Things Worth Remembering
How ‘City on a Hill’ Became ‘America First’
The U.S.’s founding ideal emphasized mercy, humility, and mutual obligation. Its modern counterpart does much the opposite.
Lydia Dugdale
Why We Still Choose to Go to the Moon
In 1962, President John F. Kennedy said that we choose to go to the moon not because it is easy, but because it is hard. More than 60 years later…
Joe Nocera
‘Hannah Montana’ Understood the Internet Before We Did
My generation grew up watching Miley Cyrus defend her private life from her public identity. Then social media made that very dilemma our own.
Sascha Seinfeld
Things Worth Remembering: If You Will It, It Is No Dream
It is said that in 1897, Theodor Herzl went to the First Zionist Congress with ‘Daniel Deronda’ under his arm—a novel capturing the idealistic roots of…
Howard Jacobson
Things Worth Remembering: Our Founding Mother
Printer Mary Katharine Goddard risked British retaliation in 1777 when she produced the first widely distributed copy of the Declaration of Independence…
Norah O'Donnell
Things Worth Remembering: To Sit at the Same Table
A stanza from ‘The House by the Side of the Road’ became my family’s reminder that no argument can float too far from the deeper connection of love…
Keaton Swett
Things Worth Remembering: The Day Jesse Jackson Asked for Forgiveness
In 1984, after alienating American Jews and losing his bid for the presidency, the late Jesse Jackson delivered a concession speech that remains a…
Eli Lake
Things Worth Remembering: James Van Der Beek Was the Best of Us
The ‘Dawson’s Creek’ star, who died Wednesday at 48, sought to teach his kids “how easy it can be to laugh, to love, to cry, to learn . . .and to find…
Mary Katharine Ham
Things Worth Remembering: Friction Makes Life Worth Living
Technology promises to alleviate every inconvenience. But as Kurt Vonnegut said in 1995, aren’t the annoyances we’re racing to erase the very things…
Josh Kaplan
Things Worth Remembering: Elvis Costello Brought Poetry to Life
What a shame that conventional wisdom deems most poetry inaccessible. And what a beautiful thing that music so often proves that belief wrong.
Peter Richmond
Things Worth Remembering: The Poem That Outlived the Holocaust
Every year, millions around the world honor the victims of the Holocaust by singing Hannah Senesh’s poem, ‘Eli, Eli’: five imperfect lines about a…
Douglas Century
Things Worth Remembering: MLK’s Final Act of Faith
‘Somewhere I read of freedom,’ said Martin Luther King Jr. in the last speech of his life. Most of us today don’t need to read of our rights to know…
Jonathan Eig
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