Sublime

Oscar Villadolid, a boy at the time, remembers a familiar scene from the aftermath of Manila’s “liberation.” A GI came down his street handing out cigarettes and Hershey bars. Speaking slowly, he asked Villadolid’s name. When Villadolid replied easily in English, the soldier was startled. “How’d ya learn American?” he asked. Villadolid explained th

In March 1978, Waterman embarked on his most astonishing expedition, a solo ascent of Mt. Hunter’s southeast spur, an unclimbed route that had previously defeated three teams of elite mountaineers.

‘A war more unjust in its origin, a war more calculated in its progress to cover this country with permanent disgrace, I do not know, and I have not read of,’ was William Gladstone’s verdict on the Opium War and capture of Hong Kong.

From Venezuela, Humboldt and Bonpland sailed for Cuba, arriving at Havana and the comforts of civilization in November of 1800. Humboldt wandered about Havana’s botanical garden, made more maps (the first accurate maps of Cuba), and observed with sinking heart the institution of slavery (“no doubt the greatest of all evils that afflict humanity”).

With its publication Wilson became, as Frederick Jackson Turner saw it, “the first southern scholar of adequate training and power who has dealt with American history as a whole.” Other reviewers shared Turner’s admiration for Wilson’s history, yet they couldn’t help but notice the author’s fondness for the Ku Klux Klan, an organization whose missi

Today, Cornelius Rhoads lives in Puerto Rican memory as a villain. On the mainland, however, he’s been remembered differently: as a pioneer of chemotherapy. Indeed, more than remembered, he has been honored. Starting in 1980, with money from an anonymous donor, the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) gave the prestigious Cornelius P. Rh

The most ambitious publishing effort of his career was launched, a work of ten volumes encompassing the entire natural history of the United States. It was his “endeavor to make myself understood by all.”

This influence always went far beyond our ability to impose our will. It’s strongest where no coercion is involved. Our culture has a pervasive reach beyond anything the British Empire or Soviet internationalism or the French mission civilisatrice achieved—this in spite of Americans’ unwillingness to live abroad. Gilbert and Sullivan did not catch