Sublime

The safeguards included in all previous New York State legislation on authorities to limit their lifespan were the provisions setting a time limit on their bonds, a date by which each authority must redeem all its bonds, surrender control of all its facilities and go out of existence. Moses, drafting amendments to the Triborough Bridge Authority Ac

But for the Virginia-born Wilson, the New Freedom was for whites only. The first southerner elected president since Zachary Taylor, Wilson immediately segregated the government’s workforce.

At Bretton Woods, in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, the soon-to-be-victorious Allies met in July 1944 to devise a new financial architecture for the post-war world. In this new order, trade would be progressively liberalized, but restrictions on capital movements would remain in place. Exchange rates would be fixed, as under the gold standard, bu

Disregard for law, of course, implies regard for that which law is a barrier against: naked force, power sufficient to bend society or individuals, if not protected by law, to its will. And this, too, now became noticeable in the character of Robert Moses.

Upon Wilson’s election, some twenty thousand Filipinos gathered in Manila to celebrate—the paper called him “a modern Moses.” They had reason for optimism. The 1912 Democratic Party platform condemned imperialism as “an inexcusable blunder, which has involved us in enormous expense, brought us weakness instead of strength, and laid our nation open

Surely Woodrow Wilson does not need their flattering omissions, after all. His progressive legislative accomplishments in just his first two years, including tariff reform, an income tax, the Federal Reserve Act, and the Workingmen’s Compensation Act, are almost unparalleled. Wilson’s speeches on behalf of self-determination stirred the world, even

By this time, George Reedy says, “Russell was very determined to elect Johnson President of the United States.” And, Reedy says, “There was no question whatsoever that anybody that signed” such an inflammatory, anti–civil rights document “could never become President of the United States.” As Russell’s biographer, Gilbert C. Fite, wrote, “Russell w

In a tragic coda to this early story of eugenics, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory was still enmeshed in the controversy over eugenics as recently as January 2019, this time through the disgraceful racist utterances of Nobel laureate James D. Watson, cofounder of the DNA double helix and one of the laboratory’s longtime fellows, whom they stripped of

To protect Rule 22 and clean up Lyndon Johnson on civil rights, Richard Russell had decided that the civil rights bill should be allowed to go on the Senate Calendar. Those five votes were the signal Russell wanted that the West would stand with the South on future civil rights votes. Of the forty-five votes in favor of the Hells Canyon bill, five