Walter A. McDougall’s History of American Power - Washington Examiner

Walter A. McDougall’s history of American power - Washington Examiner

In one of the earlier chapters of historian Walter A. McDougall’s recently compiled volume The Gems of American History: A Lecturer’s Art, we are treated to a pregnant aside. McDougall describes a 1790s letter exchange between Charles Thomson, “spy master and eminence grise of the American Revolution,” and President George Washington. Thomson apparently suggested to Washington that they write their own memoirs, since no one but the two of them k…

Hope, history and the American myth we still believe In

This Fourth of July reflection explores the tension between myth and truth in American history, asking what we choose to remember—and why it still matters.