Welcome to Our Great American Heritage. This page is designed as a reader-friendly guide through the major themes on the site: war, leadership, sacrifice, national division, innovation, and the complicated choices that shaped American history.
If you are new here, start with the collections below. Each section links related stories together so readers can move naturally from one article to the next.
World War II, World War I, and Wartime Sacrifice
- Unprepared and Overconfident: Remembering Pearl Harbor
- Midway – The Four Days When America’s Fate Hung by a Thread
- D-Day and The Landing at Omaha Beach
- Christmas Miracles in Bastogne: Patton and the Battle of the Bulge
- The Tragic Story of the Sinking of the USS Indianapolis
- The Fall of Douglas MacArthur and the Rise of Dwight Eisenhower
- Eye Witness to History – War Correspondents of WWII
- Terror in the North Atlantic: Nazi U-boat Attacks on American Ships
- American Automakers and Their Nazi Collaboration During WW II
- Was General George Patton Murdered?
- The War, And The Wondrous Christmas Of 1944
- Eisenhower and the D-Day Decision
- The Freedom of the World Depended on the Higgins Landing Craft
- Women Forced Into Men’s Jobs: Mobilization During WW II
- Theodore Roosevelt Jr: The Oldest Soldier on Omaha Beach
- D-Day 80 Years Later: The Landing on Omaha Beach
- America and the Great War: Hopes, Dreams and Blue Death
- The Battle at Belleau Wood: The Legend of the U.S. Marines
- Unlikely Hero’s of World War I – African Americans, Native Americans, and more
- Television and Nazism at the 1939 New York World’s Fair
The Civil War, Lincoln, and Reconstruction
- Antietam and the 1862 Midterm Elections
- Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Calamitous Decision: The Battle of Gettysburg
- The Death of Lincoln Brought Great Sadness to Many and Jubilation to Others
- The Fraud of 1876: The End of Reconstruction
- Jim Crow and the Corrupt Election Of 1876
- For Some, the War Never Ends. Mental Illness and the Civil War
- Civil War Surgeons: The Other Nightmare
- Modern Weaponry and Antiquated Medicine: The Civil War was the Perfect Storm
- Many Civil War Dead Were Never Identified
- Slavery was Supported By White Southern Pastors
- Letters of Civil War Nurses are Windows into the Past
- Confusion and Anxiety: Lincoln and the Days Before the War
- Was He a Fraud, or the Real Hero of Gettysburg? The Truth About Daniel Sickles
- Andrew Carnegie and other Captains of Industry Refused to Serve in the Military
Presidents, Power, and Leadership
- That Week in October 1962: Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis
- The Sinking of the Lusitania and the Reluctant March to War
- Theodore Roosevelt: The Charismatic Architect of a New America
- J. Edgar Hoover: Power and Paranoia
- Joe Kennedy Jr: The Presidency That Might Have Been
- General Douglas MacArthur and President Harry Truman: The End of the World?
- Frances Perkins: The Woman Behind Modern America
- Defeated for Re-election, Some of FDR’s Programs Had Been Herbert Hoover’s Ideas
- Eugenics, and the Troubling Ideology of Woodrow Wilson and others
- Taking Down McCarthyism: The Courage of Margaret Chase Smith
- FDR and His Enemies: The Rise of Evangelism
- Eisenhower: The 5-Star General, Who Never Had Battlefield Experience
- The Bomb and the Plainness of Harry Truman
- Woodrow Wilson and the Sinking of the Lusitania
- General George Custer: A Fool, or A Misguided Narcissist?
- If you want to know the truth about history, start with George Washington’s birthplace
America in Transformation
- The Magnificent Empire State Building: Hope Rises Out of Despair in 1931
- Building The Golden Gate: The Impossible Bridge
- The Price of Industrializing America: Children in the Workplace
- Chicago Meatpacking Industry in 1900: Pickled Hands, and More
- Early Hollywood Sounded the Alarm for Film Censorship
- Early Radio Reflected the Good and Bad of America
- Tax Cheaters in America: How Reform Sparked Resistance and Fraud
- The Age of Confidence: A Nation Racing Ahead and Unaware of the Brewing Storms
- Dreams, Lies, and Flapper Girls: The Myth of the 1920’s
- The Public Was Slow To Accept Electric Lights in Ships
- The Public Has Forgotten the Achievements of Women
- Polio Doctors Struggled to Advise the Public
- Out of Despair America Created Its Heroes
American Culture, Fear, Crime, and Belief
- Spiritualism: When America Tried to Speak with the Dead
- Grave Robbers: Nightmares from 19th Century America
- Monsters in the American Mind: How Hollywood Shaped Our Dark Imagination
- Conspiracy Theories: The Stories We Tell and the Fears that Consume Us
- Jolly Jane – The Nurse Everyone Loved, Until She Killed Them
- The Timeless Magic of It’s a Wonderful Life
- Hall-Mills Murder: The Salacious Story of the Priest and His Parishioner
- Talking to the Dead in Post-Civil War America
- Nationalism and Being Un-American in America
Explore All Articles
For the full collection, visit the American history archive: American History.