So it is perhaps worth pausing for a moment to

When students at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism in Chicago (named for Robert McCormick’s grandfather) were asked in 1927 to name the ten most outstanding people in the world, they chose Charles Lindbergh, Richard Byrd, Benito Mussolini, Henry Ford, Herbert Hoover, Albert Einstein, Mahatma Gandhi, George Bernard Shaw, the golfer Bobby

Ford, it transpired, did not know much of anything. He could not say when the American Revolution was fought (“In 1812, I think; I’m not quite sure”) or quite what the issues were that provoked it. Questioned about politics, he conceded that he didn’t follow matters closely and had voted only once in his life. That was just after his twenty-first

In New York in 1932, Roxy Rothafel opened Radio City Music Hall at Rockefeller Center. (The famous Rockettes were originally the Roxyettes.)

While building their empire, they also quietly but significantly changed the world. At a place called Turkey Ridge outside Cleveland

Between 1957 and his death, Lindbergh had conducted a secret long-distance relationship with a German milliner, Brigitte Hesshaimer of Munich, with whom he had two sons and a daughter. The children told reporters that Lindbergh had been “a mystery visitor who would turn up once or twice a year.” They knew he was their father, but thought his name

The race was scheduled for August but was overtaken by events considerably before then. On June 29, two army fliers successfully flew in a Fokker from Oakland to Oahu in twenty-six hours. It was an extraordinary achievement—hitting Hawaii was a real feat of navigation—and the two pilots, Lieutenant Lester J. Maitland and Lieutenant Albert F.

remember just some of the things that happened that summer: Babe Ruth hit sixty home runs. The Federal Reserve made the mistake that precipitated the stock market crash. Al Capone enjoyed his last summer of eminence. The Jazz Singer was filmed. Television was created. Radio came of age. Sacco and Vanzetti were executed. President Coolidge chose not

At a time when gold reserves were the basic marker of national wealth, America held half the world’s supply, or as much as all the rest of the world put together. No other country in history had ever been this affluent,