Brave Companions

Any city that has the Library of Congress is my capital. Some of the best, most productive days of my life have been spent in its manuscript collection or working with its newspaper files. It is one of the wonders of the world. The statistics are staggering—twenty million books, of which less than a fourth are in English, nearly six million pieces

Charles A. Lindbergh Jr., the finest pilot of the era, flew the 3,610-mile stretch from New York to Paris nonstop and alone, without radio or sextant, in a single-engine plane of only 223 horsepower. He was twenty-five years old, and the historic date was May 21, 1927.

On June 11, 1881, the road was purchased outright by the Compagnie Universelle du Canal Inter-océanique for $20 million. Park himself cleared about $7 million on the transaction. Years later, in 1904, when the United States purchased all the holdings of the long-since bankrupt French canal company—its equipment, properties, the unfinished excavatio

“Antietam,” I said. “Maybe you know it as Sharpsburg.” She hadn’t any idea of what I was talking about. I said there are 57,000 names on the Vietnam Memorial and the Vietnam War lasted eleven years. At the Battle of Antietam in one day there were 23,000 casualties. In one day. It was not just the worst, bloodiest day of the Civil War; its toll in h

If asked to name my favorite book about the city, I would have to pick Margaret Leech’s Pulitzer Prize-winning history, Reveille in Washington, first published in 1941,

Lionel Rothschild, a great friend of Disraeli, who made history by financing Britain’s purchase of the Suez Canal in 1875. But it is Lionel’s son, Natty (1840-1915), described by Miriam as gruff, sentimental, and dapper, who ranks as one of the most brilliant financiers of all time. In the popular press he was considered the real ruler of England,

The combination of the Library of Congress, the National Archives, and the Smithsonian, all within walking distance of one another, more than justifies the city’s reputation as an unrivaled center for research. And they are only the largest and best-known of numerous libraries and research facilities within the city limits. There are a half dozen u

I feel so sorry for anyone who misses the experience of history, the horizons of history. We think little of those who, given the chance to travel, go nowhere. We deprecate provincialism. But it is possible to be as provincial in time as it is in space. Because you were born into this particular era doesn’t mean it has to be the limit of your exper

Lindbergh was told by a Masai warrior that civilization is not progress. “We have known freedom far greater than yours,” he told Lindbergh, and Lindbergh never forgot the moment. “The primitive,” he wrote in Autobiography of Values, “teaches that life itself, unforced life, is progress, a fact our civilization tends more and more to overlook.” He b