Contemporary writers and historians examine specific events that have shaped American history, from the Boston Tea Party to the final days of the first Bush administration.

Collection of essays by various authors based on interviews originally held on the television program Booknotes. Includes index.

Revolution and founding, 1776-1815 (Alfred F. Young on a shoemaker and the Boston Tea Party -- Pauline Maier on declaring independence -- Jack N. Rakove on creating the Constitution -- Robert Scigliano on The Federalist papers -- Annette Gordon-Reed on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings -- Roger G. Kennedy on the American and French Revolutions -- Bernard A. Weisberger on the contested election of 1800 -- Arnold A. Rogow on the Hamilton-Burr duel -- Michael H. Cottman on the slave ship Henrietta Marie) -- The young nation, 1815-1850 (Joyce Appleby on the first generation of Americans -- Andrew Burstein on celebrating fifty years of independence -- Harvey C. Mansfield on Tocqueville's "Democracy in America") Slavery and the Civil War, 1850-1865 (Stephen B. Oates on the buildup to the Civil War -- James M. McPherson on volunteer soldiers -- Drew Gilpin Faust on women of the slaveholding south -- Joseph E. Stevens on the events of 1863 -- James M. Perry on Civil War correspondents -- Brooks D. Simpson on Ulysses S. Grant's military career -- Douglas L. Wilson, Allen C. Guelzo, Lerone Bennett Jr., and differing perspectives on Abraham Lincoln -- H.W. Crocker III, Tom Wheeler, and the leadership of Robert E. Lee -- William J. Cooper Jr. on Jefferson Davis and the confederacy) -- Rebuilding America and the gilded age, 1865-1901 (Witold Rybczynski on Frederick Law Olmsted and the building of Central Park David Haward Bain on the First Transcontinental Railroad -- H. Paul Jeffers on Grover Cleveland's political career -- H.W. Brands on the events of the 1890s -- Ben Proctor on William Randolph Hearst and the rise of yellow journalism -- Jean Strouse on J.P. Morgan, national banker) -- Progressive era and reaction, 1901-1929 (Linda O. McMurry on the crusades of Ida B. Wells -- Dorothy Herrmann on the celebrity of Helen Keller -- Gina Kolata on the 1918 influenza pandemic -- Emily Bernard on Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten -- Edward J. Larson on the scopes "monkey" trial -- Robert A. Slayton on Al Smith and the 1928 election -- Larry Tye on Edward L. Bernays and the birth of public relations A. Scott Berg on Charles Lindbergh's reluctant public life -- Peter Collier on the Roosevelt dynasty) -- Depression and war, 1929-1945 (David M. Kennedy on the Great Depression and World War II -- Allen Weinstein on the early days of Soviet espionage -- Elizabeth M. Norman on the nurses captured on Bataan -- Amity Shlaes on the creation of the withholding tax -- James Bradley on raising the flag on Iwo Jima -- Tom Brokaw on the World War II generation -- Nicholas Lemann on the great black migration -- Sally Bedell Smith, David Brinkley, Peter Jennings, and early network news) Early cold war, 1945-1957 (David Fromkin on five men who shaped the post-World War II world -- Christopher Matthews on the unlikely Kennedy-Nixon friendship -- Jean Edward Smith on Lucius D. Clay and postwar Berlin -- Zachary Karabell on Truman defeats Dewey -- Arthur Herman on the rise and fall of Joseph McCarthy -- Norman Podhoretz on the New York intelligentsia) -- Social transformation, 1957-1975 (Roy Reed on Orval Faubus and the desegregation of Central High School -- Robert Dallek on Lyndon Johnson and the 1960 election -- Jay Parini on Robert Frost and the Kennedy inauguration -- Donald Kagan on the Cuban missile crisis -- Andrew Young on Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" -- Diane McWhorter on the 1963 Birmingham church bombing -- Ben Bradlee on the Kennedy years Arlen Specter on the Warren Commission -- Jeff Shesol on the RFK-LBJ feud -- Anthony Lewis on New York Times Co. v. Sullivan -- Jon Margolis on stories from 1964 -- Tinsley E. Yarbrough on John Marshall Harlan and the Warren court -- Leonard Garment on getting to know Richard M. Nixon -- Charles V. Hamilton on the life and career of Adam Clayton Powell Jr. -- Elizabeth Taylor on Richard J. Daley and Chicago's political machine -- Peter R. Kann and Frances FitzGerald on reporting from Vietnam -- Stuart I. Rochester on American POWS in Vietnam) -- The culture wars, 1975-2000 (Irving Kristol, Nina J. Easton, and the rise of the neoconservatives -- Kiron K. Skinner on the forgotten radio scripts of Ronald Reagan -- John A. Farrell on the political lore of Tip O'Neill -- Shelby Steele, Cornel West, Thomas Sowell, Randall Robinson : a symposium on race Don Oberdorfer on the Regan-Gorbachev Summits -- Marlin Fitzwater on Reagan, Bush, and the press -- Bob Woodward on planning the Persian Gulf war -- John Podhoretz on the last days of the first Bush White House -- Richard E. Cohen on Dan Rostenkowski's fall from power -- Tim Russert on a half-century of "Meet the Press" -- Bonnie Angelo on modern presidents' mothers).