In a nation of immigrants, picking ten books about the immigrant experience is no easy task. One could plausibly argue that any book about post-Columbian America concerns the immigrant Read More

Underrated. A tie—between the Lower East Side Tenement Museum in New York City, and the National Civil Rights Museum, in Memphis. Both museums are unique adaptations of historic buildings Read More

Overrated As often happens with our presidents, the recent outpouring of grief over the death of Ronald Reagan has tended to distort the historical record. This is certainly Read More

Underrated. There is a difference between an icon and a good picture, as this category clearly indicates. This rather pedestrian photograph—generally unknown—is a shot of Lincoln’s funeral Read More

Underrated John Vliet Lindsay was hardly New York’s greatest mayor. (In fact, the first city in history to be ruled by the common man has had only two truly outstanding mayors, DeWitt Clinton Read More

I spoke with Martin Scorsese about his forthcoming movie, The Gangs of New York, on September 8. The setting was the Park Avenue offices of his Cappa production company Read More

Most Overrated Political Speech: Conservatives often like to refer nostalgically to “The Speech,” a nationally televised address Ronald Reagan gave in support of Barry Goldwater Read More

Most Overrated Event in This Century: My first choice would be something of a nonevent: the failure of the United States to join the League of Nations following World War II. Read More

  The English journalist has spent more than a decade preparing a book on this country’s role in the most eventful hundred years since the race began. He liked what he found enough to become an American himself.   Evans likes to refer to The American Century as “history for browsers.” There are searching essays at the start of each chapter, but most of the book consists of tiropage spreads concerning particular people or events. These are driven by pictures culled by Gail Buckland, the book’s photographic historian, from archives and collections around the United States. Buckland, an associate professor Read More