The Washingtons' War

Abraham Lincoln must have been pained by the number of Washingtons on the other side during the Civil War. He idolized George Washington. One of the first books he read as a boy was Parson Weems’s apocryphal biography of the first president, and it made a lasting...
If Only They'd Run for Sheriff

If Only They'd Run for Sheriff

In his 1972 epic on the origins of the U.S. war in Vietnam, the great journalist David Halberstam told of then-new Vice President Lyndon Johnson’s coming back from his first meeting with the top people President John F. Kennedy had picked to serve in his...